Texas Fish Fry

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Tuesday, March 10

The sky is grey and the street is wet, all vehicles are wet too. It looks like it has been raining. What kind of day is it going to be?
Humidity 91%, that’s not rain, that’s just the moisture from the ocean. It’s still early and we need to wait for the sun to come out and the sky will be just as beautiful as it was yesterday.
Before we plan for our departure home we need to do some laundry. We’re not going anywhere until the work is done.
We use this morning to tidy up and drive to the lighthouse of Port Isabel.
We learn a bit about the history of Port Isabel and the lighthouse which was built in 1851 by John Garey of Brownsville.
Point Isabel was founded in 1770. It was called Point Isabel at one time. The shape of the land formed a point in the Laguna Madre Bay. Hence the name.
The 30ft bluff made this are a natural port and in 1927 the name was changed to Port Isabel, after Queen Isabella of Spain.
Just like at any old harbour there are many ghost stories around the lighthouse.
Famed pirate, Jean LaFitte was rumored to have visited Port Isabel and many other pirates have also rowed aboard shore.
There are dolfins, whales and sharks in the bay it’s great for fishing. Port Isabel is the shrimp capital of Texas.
The average temperature of Port Isabel is 74 degrees F. Summers are extremely hot.

For the afternoon we are invited to a fish fry and drive to a huge RV park on the south tip of South Padre Island.
The guys there like to go fishing and have a freezer full of fish. The wives have ordered: “No more fishing until some of the fish in the freezer is gone”. So what else to do than invite a bunch of friends for a fish fry.

Every one brings a dish of either salad or dessert and the hosts look after the fish. One batch is fried in garlic butter in the electric frying pan, while another batch is coated and fried in the deep fryer.
We fill our tummies and are all having a great time. We meet new friends of which many from Canada. The guys play music and the ladies learn a new line dance.
At 6:00 pm, the sun slowly sets and we can feel the humidity rice. It is time to leave.
We can not go to our RV and are invited by Al and Yvonne one more time. They cook up some chicken and shrimp and by 9:00 pm we are eating again. The chicken needs to be washed down with drinks which makes everyone relaxed, some even silly.
The plan was, for us to leave tomorrow morning, but it is already way to late, to make an early departure and we haven’t even been on a dolfin tour yet.
After we watch the weather across the north on the computer, we finally convince Ramiro to wait one more day. It is 32 below zero in Edmonton and they just had another snow storm. All over the northern part of the states there is snow forcasted. There is no way we can drive there. We may have to change our route and instead of going straight north and then head west once in Canada. We may take a south western route before we turn north into Canada. Hopefully the weather changes soon. For Pete’s sake it is March, it should be spring weather.

There is a full moon tonight and we enjoy our walk home to the parking lot.