Where Does the Time Go?

We left gate guarding on February 15 and have been staying at Port Isabel, Texas. This is a small town on the east southern tip of Texas.  We have been there for 6 weeks and had a wonderful tie.  The town leads over to South Padre Island which is some what of a tourist attraction, but the town itself is pretty small.  My sister and brother-in-law, stay there every winter, so we decide to join them. 

We  really enjoyed our stay there but boy was it windy.  But then what do you expect when you are surrounded by water.  Port Isabel is a small town and then you have a 2 mile bridge that takes you over to South Padre Island.

Port Isabel, Tx
This light house is downtown
notice the wind

 

2 mile bridge going over to South Padre Island

My brother-in-law, Ron goes fishing almost every day.  No matter what the weather or how windy.  Ed declined quite a few of the days.  He's not the fisherman I thought he was.  I think he is getting "wimpy".  He doesn't read my blog so he won't  know I said that.

This is the dock they fish off of at Port Isabel

They also fish off the jedi.  This is off of South Padre Island

The first day they went out some guy fell off
Ed said at first all you could see was his feet sticking up
They were able to throw him a fishing stringer and pull him up
He was a little beat up from hitting against the rocks

Ron's fish?  But he did catch bigger ones at other times.

Bird taking a casual walk I think he is waiting for a fish.

Ed fell and of course he had to reenact the event.  Ron took the picture.

He said he slipped on something

 

 

This was the sting ray that took off with his pole
Later he snagged the pole with his other pole and brought
them both in.  There was also a shell attached but it fell off and
back into the water. 

We took the dolphin tour on Stella's birthday and the dolphin's didn't cooperate but we still had a nice time.  The weather was beautiful that day.  They pull a box behind the boat and show everybody what they caught.  It was interesting.

We did see a few dolphins but they weren't very close

This is what they drug up, mainly star fish

Ed insisted Stella hold one for the picture

A puffer fish was also caught
afterwards they throw them all back

There are shrimp boats everywhere.  But they always seem to be there so not sure when they go out.

There are also anchors everywhere, these are just a few of them.

They were huge and everywhere

Not an anchor but I thought it was interesting

We spent some time walking the beach but it was covered in seaweed and jelly fish.

Seaweed and jelly fish covered the beach
Stella said before spring break they would clean it up

In the back ground are the hotels

The jelly fish are pretty but they are also poisonous

We took our metal detectors out to the beach after the kids from spring break had left thinking maybe we would find something they had lost.  But Ed said they must have held on to their stuff  because this is what we found.

The metal detectors are not paying for their selves at this rate

 

It was a cold windy day.

South Padre Island is one of the main places the kids on spring break go.                               

 

Some of the Spring breakers

Sort of reminds you of the "60's"

Walmart getting ready for the Spring breakers coming in.
It's a big thing on the Island

 

This is where we were parked.  It was pretty tight but we had a little grass and trees and birds and most of the time a nice breeze coming in the windows. 

We were snug

This was 2 blocks down from us

There is so much more I could share but I have to stop for now.  I will try and not wait so long for the next time.

Happy Trails    Love  Ed and Lyn

During these times we need to remember Jesus said:
John 14:27  Peace, I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Why is Gate Guarding like a Sabbatical?

Definition of Sabbatical:  Bringing a period of rest.  Well to me it means getting away and doing some soul searching or meditating.  We have had plenty of time to do that.  Since I am awake while Ed sleeps and vice-versa, we both have had a lot of time alone.  Plus we are out here in the middle of nowhere, with no place to go and nothing to do. When we do to go to town only one of us can go, thus more time alone.  My day starts at 4 am.  I have always liked getting up early and reading my bible and praying, so this is perfect for me.  Although I have to admit 4am is a little early. 

So Ed and I  have been discussing gate guarding is like going on a sabbatical.  We are working but our trucks are few and far between so there is a lot of time of doing nothing.  Ed watches tv and I spend a lot of time on the computer.   Both of our job sites have been really slow so we  haven't worked very hard.  How often can you get paid for sitting around doing nothing.

The first month we were here was very relaxing for me.    It felt really good after a hectic couple of months just to have some down time.  The second and third month weren't bad.  But now comes the fourth month going into the fifth,  we are really ready to leave.  We have been counting down the days for the last month.  We were going to leave Feb 1st but decided to stay until Feb 15th.  We are so ready to go. We are looking forward to eating out, shopping, sightseeing and just everything. 

I have to say this gate guarding has been a good experience.  I wouldn't want to do it long term but I am glad we have done it and it served it's purpose. 

Ed went around and took pictures of some of the people that are gate guarding and got a little bit of their stories.

We try and make the most of not having any grass
 

This is a deer stand and the trucks drive by and
he gets their information.   On the right you will see a tray, it's one of
those car hop trays. His wife brings his meals out and hooks them
on the window.

This is where the guy in the previous picture lives with his wife,
the deer stand is just to the left of it.  They have done this for
1 year and plan on doing it for 4 more years.

They have been here long enough to build
a deck

This is a mother and daughter team plus 2 kids (9 and 6)
They have been gate guards for 1 year

This couple have a house just outside of San Antonio,
They do this part time to supplement their social security.
They have a real nice spot. 


 

I thought this was interesting when I saw it.  The front one shades the MH
and the one on top shades the air conditioner.
 They plan on being here for the summer.

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They look like they brought everything, sort of like me.

This was an older guy who does the gate by himself.  I guess
when you have a slow gate you can do that.
He just doses off on the couch between trucks.
 

Well you can see that people use all kinds of rv's and different sizes to gate guard in.  Some people come in for short times and others plan on staying for several years.   Our time has been almost 5 months and we are more than ready to go.

Then of course there is us,  this is the back side.  Shows you all the
brush, which is he reason we have so many mice and rats.

On a side note we are up to 5 rats and I quit counting the mice.  We have a sticky black glue trap which we hadn't check for about a week.  It was stuck up under the gas pedal so we couldn't see it very well.  I looked at it one day and it had 3 mice stuck on it.  Don't know how long they had been there.  That is one thing I won't miss about gate guarding.

With just one day of rain, we had mud everywhere.  You just sink down into it.  So Ed came up with the idea of wearing his boots out to the gate.  That way we just slip into them at the door and slip them off when we come back in.  I didn't want to do it at first.  I felt dumb walking out to the gate in these big boots, but the mud sticks to your shoes so bad, I didn't have any choice. 

Don't I look nice?

I had more pictures but my Internet is so slow I decided to stop here.

Happy Trails.   Love Ed and Lyn


James 1:5  If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally
                  and without reproach, and it will be given him.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas and Wishing you the best in the coming New Year!!!!!

I can't believe the year is coming to an end.  I remember my Mother telling me the years between 65 and 75 go really fast.  And even though I haven't quite made it to 65, I can attest to the fact the years seem to be speeding up.

We are still gate guarding, but we have left our old site.  It was amazing how we got attached to it.  Ed said it felt like we had homesteaded it.  I had picked up trash and Ed had whacked down weeds.  We had our little tent up, we were there to stay.  But it wasn't to be.


We were packed up and ready to go, I wish we
could have taken our pallets with us, but so far
 we haven't had any rain, so we haven't had the mud
 

I thought this was an unusual face, but then again I
don't see very many cows
We don't have cows at the new site

 We have been at our new spot 1 month.  It is different than the other one.  We don't have the tree cover and there isn't much to see here. Ed says he saw a bob cat out by the gate yesterday morning.   One of the truckers told Ed he saw a 7 foot rattler about as big around as his arm.  Ed walked down to see if he could find it.  How smart is that?   But anyone knowing Ed, would believe it.  But he didn't find it, thank God.  He said he would liked to have had the skin.  Some people say the generator will draw them in because of the heat, so I am really cautious when I walk out there in the morning to turn off our flood lights.

This is our new site

Everything gets covered in dust

Beyond this hill is our well,  You look out over the horizon and
you will see all these fires, it's natural gas coming off the wells
 

We don't seem to have the mice here that we had at the other place, although we have had a few.  One afternoon we are watching a show and I look down and see one in the middle of the floor in front of us.  So of course I let out a scream.  Ed's like, "what, what, what."  I probably over reacted.  The thing was up on his back paws, just sitting there.  He looked sick.  At first Ed thought maybe he had eaten the d-con and was dying.  But later he figured he had been on one of those sticky things and was exhausted from getting loose.  OK here comes the disgusting part.  Ed didn't want him running off so he gets up and goes over and steps on him, and he is barefoot.  Now I am screaming even more.  I can't believe he did that.  Well as always, Ed keeps life interesting.

Well we don't seem to have the mice, but we have rats.  But at least they are outside, if they were inside I would probably be leaving right away.   Something was eating all the d-con plus it was taking the containers over and putting them under the jeep.  I had read on the forum that sometimes mice will get in your engine and chew on the wiring, so I told Ed he better make sure they hadn't made a   nest in the engine.  Well he waited a few days, but he finally checked it and we had a dead rat in the engine and he had been making a nest.  Ed found the rag he keeps in there to check his oil and some pieces of cactus.  He was really fat, so not sure if it was from all the d-con he had been eating or what.  The bad part was I had driven to town a couple of days before that, that's when we saw that the d-con was under the jeep, and he probably went with me.  Was he dead or alive, who knows.  We have been going through so much d-con here Ed went out and bought 2 rat traps.  Since then we have caught 2 more rats.  I haven't taken any pictures of our dead rats because I really didn't think you would want to see them.  lol

When we were ready to leave the other place, Ed saw what he thought was a stick up in the wheel well of the motor home.  He starts pulling on it and out comes a decomposed body of something.  I told him at that time I thought it looked like a rat.  He thought it was something else.  But now after these rats, I am pretty sure that is what it was.   We had smelled something previously for about a week and Ed thought it was just a dead mouse.  Will the mice and rat stories never end?

Ed keeps himself busy doing things.  He started making these back in Indiana.  He said he had about 80 walnuts.  The truckers see his work station and want to know what he is doing.  He had given most of them away.  I think he has about 10 left.

Ed's workshop, truckers going by are always asking
what he is making

The truckers seem to love these
 

Ed demonstrating his back scratcher

 They were fracking at our neighbors and this is how busy they were.  So far we haven't had to go through that.

Looking from our gate to the neighbors
This goes on for about 2 weeks, day and night



This is looking out our gate to the one across the road

Here they are lined up on both sides of the road
they didn't have anywhere to go



 

Of course I am up in the morning so I get to see all the sunrises.  This was one I thought was especially pretty. 

Beautiful

Wishing everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!   Ed and Lyn


May the LORD be with you in the coming year.

Micah 6:8 What does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love mercy,
 and to walk humbly with your God?