Busy Exploring and Shopping

Yesterday, for a day without a specific plan as we started out, turned out to be a busy and adventurous one. We'd talked with Dortha and Mark about going to the little town of Goliad one day to see the missions there. So, after the usual morning routines that now include a 2 mile walk around the rv park, we headed out. Goliad is one of the oldest towns in Texas and played a big part in it's history. I learned a lot by visiting this interesting town.

The first mission we visited was Presidio La Bahia, which was built in this location in 1749, after it had been moved twice from other locations. The chapel, Our Lady of Loreto, was built to serve the spiritual needs of the soldiers stationed there.

This is the awe-inspiring interior of the chapel:

After our visit to the fort and chapel, we went into town and found a Subway Sandwich Shop and had a quick lunch, then to the historic downtown area of Goliad:


Dortha had downloaded a few geocaches to Flo, so we went in search of two in Goliad. I did not take my GPS, so we relied entirely on Flo. Even though she doesn't get us right to the cache, it proved to be close enough, and we found both. The next stop was at Goliad State Park. We took a short drive around the park before going to the mission, Espiritu Santo:

The third cache was a ways out of town, but we managed to find it before heading back home.

We had already talked about doing some shopping in Port Aransas today, so that was the starting plan. Again, a 2 mile walk was part of the morning routine. Sandra had left a plate here on Sunday, so we made a run over to Goose Island State Park to return it before we headed to Port A.

Dortha was hoping to find a replacement for an ankle bracelet and wanted to stop at a shop in Port Aransas. We all found a few things for grandchildren, but no bracelet. The next stop was in Corpus Christi to see if I could find sugar free caramel syrup that I like in my coffee. I used to find it at Sam's Club, but they didn't have any the last time we looked there. Dortha remembered that her son gets sugar free syrup at World Market, so I wanted to try there. Success -- I'm all stocked up again.

We stopped at Barnes and Noble bookstore, but we didn't find any books we had to have, so we started back. Jim and I had not been along Shoreline Drive in Corpus Christi, so Mark took a detour along there so we could see it.

Pretty sunset from the marina:

On the way home, we could see a fire off in the distance. As we got a bit closer, we realized it was somewhere past Rockport, so we took another detour over by Copano Bay and took a few pictures. We don't know whether this was a controlled burn, or a wildfire. There may be something on the local news later:

What a great time we've had the past two days!