Snow Birds at Last!
One of our goals in retirement was to not spend an entire winter in Minnesota. Winter can be beautiful, but after 55 years, we had both had enough! Don't get me wrong - we for sure want to celebrate holidays with our family - but as soon as January comes around, our goal is to be somewhere warm, especially in January, February and March. January 2021 was our first 'escape the winter' trip, and we officially joined the ranks as snowbirds.
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| Exploring the Texas Coast |
We had left our RV with Tim's sister in Texas heading home after the Vintage Cruiser Rally in Cape Canaveral. For the winter of 2021 we initially planned on heading southwest through New Mexico and Arizona, which would have been a lot of driving. That Cape Canaveral trip was our first with our family dog - and she didn't take so well to travel. So we modified our plans for less driving, and got the idea of just staying in Texas and visiting a friend in Austin, just outside of Houston, then head to the coast for a month.
You can read our post on our stay in Austin at Emma Long Park here.
The plan began of where to stay to take shape based on input from our Vintage Cruiser Facebook group and research on RV Parky and Campendium. We landed on four stops along the coast; Galveston Island, Matagorda Bay, Port Aransas, and South Padre Island.
Another goal for our travel is to find places where we would want to stay longer - perhaps months at a time. Generally speaking, booking a week at each drops the daily fee by between 10 and 15%. But where would we want to stay? Besides cost, what matters to us? Our criteria for long term stay evolved over time but eventually became the following (the weighting for each in parenthesis - that is, for each item we will rate it on a scale of 1-10, and weight it to get a total score out of 100):
- Weather (20): January must have highs between 70-80 during the day, and below 65 at night
- Activities(14): Decent access to walking/hiking trails/kayaking/biking
- Cost (14): Must be less than $40/day...ideally $30 or less (based on monthly rate if available)
- Environment (12): Ideally near water/ocean and/or mountain views
- VIBE (10): You know it when you feel it
- Site (8): Size and quality of site, level/privacy
- Food Basics (7): Proximity to basics - grocery stores, etc. How far is Walmart?
- Culture (5): Interesting places including breweries, bars, shopping
- View (5): Can you see a sunset or just your neighbor's mechanicals?
- Noise (5): Traffic, trains, air traffic (low score means a lot of noise)
We've created a Google sheet to track our 'scores' complete with the weightings. For our trip along the coast, and for any potential long stay travel locations, we'll be taking notes and rating the location and park. We'll share the results for each location using a graph, adding each park as we progress down the coast.
So let's dig in - first up - Exploring the Texas Coast: Galveston Island.
Do you stay in places more than a week? More than a month? In an RV or house/condo? What made you decide that was the "right place"? Leave your comments below! Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by following us.
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