Texas roadtrip for rockets and critters
In 2014, SpaceX started buying up property in the remote village of Boca Chica, a “town” of a couple dozen modest houses in a strip of land through a wildlife refuge at the extreme southern tip of Texas, a mile north of the border with Mexico. Turns out that this is a pretty good place, from an orbital mechanics perspective, to launch rockets. Space nerds like myself started watching the progress there, and in the intervening seven years they have gradually built up an entire rocket fabrication, test and launch facility literally in the middle of nowhere. They are working on their next generation “Starship” vehcile, which they intend to use to, no joke, colonize Mars. This is an Apollo-sized effort, but thanks to the public road that passes through the town, we can watch what’s happening every day. So for years it’s been on my wishlist to to head down there and seee the place for myself. It’s a rocket Mecca that thousands of space nerds like myself have been making the pilgrimage too. Who knows how long that road will be open …
Sharon expressed interest in joining me, so I loaded up the trip with lots of wildlife-ish destinations. The 5-day/4-night itinerary was jam-packed, and honestly should have been spread out a little more, but we wanted to keep it to four nights max.
Between the two us, Sharon and I took about a hundred photos and videos. I posted some highlights to Facebook (see photo album “Central / South Texas roadtrip”) and someday I will work them into some posts here. In the meantime here’s at least a log of what we did.
Monday Dec 20th Tesla Gigafactory driveby Georgetown: Inner Space Cavern (only a 1.5 hour tour was available, so we skipped it) Briggs: Firefly Aerospace site driveby Ding Dong TX McGregor: SpaceX rocket test facility drivearound; munitions dumps Blue Hills Ranch checkin at dusk; dinner at sad BBQ place 8pm rocket engine firing (3-4 miles away) with loud roar
Tue Dec 21st morning greeting from donkeys tour (“safari”) around ranch with giraffes, kangaroos, otters, donkeys, cattle and emus detour up to Waco to charge (no overnight charge as hoped) and get lunch from Mexican franchise Jarrell old gas station driveby (not as much to see as billed) Austin: Mayfield Park and peafowl Austin: Cathedral of Junk fail (appt only) San Antonio: Alamo Plaza, Riverwalk, bye Three Rivers: lodge and leftovers Tesla rental didn’t include charge cord, doh
Wed Dec 22nd: Choke Canyon state park and birding charge + breakfast then drive to Lower RGV Edinburg Wetland: lots of birds including the great kiskadee McAllen: National Butterfly Center, right on border, with border wall controversy Boca Chica Beach (BCB): roads reopened just before we got there, successful drivethrough of area! South Padre Island (SPI): dinner at kooky Italian place, hotel checkin, view of BCB
Thu Dec 23rd: head to BCB for another drivethrough before roads closed at 10am (possibly) driveby of Deimos oil rig work area back to SPI and breakfast / lunch SPI Birding and Nature Center: bookstore, boardwalk, birds (and Big Padre gator) Laguna Atascos: trail, gravel roads, overlook huge windmill farms (weird coordinated lights at nighttime) long drive to Corpus Christi, dinner at Mexican place (cash only) checkin at AirBnB
Fri Dec 24th: takeout breakfast from “Donut Palace”, eaten at Mustang Island state park La Palmera mall: one hour slow charge to make rest of day work, Spencer’s, Santa photos long, slower drive to make it to Victoria charging stop Schulenberg: for German/Czech culture but no time to stop, also holiday closures fast drive to Austin airport, car dropoff
movies on flights: Marie Curie, ~1940, Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon Nat Geo doc on CA water crisis
I reached silver medallion status in my frequent flyer program with Delta! I don’t fly that much but I guess they set the bar low. I normally don’t touch corporate affinity programs for privacy reasons, but there are a lot of perks that come with Delta’s programs so OK.
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