28th Jan – 1st Feb 2022
A twenty minute ferry ride across the Texas City channel took us from Galveston to the Bolivar Pennisula, another thin, sandy spit that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Texan mainland. It has one arterial route running up its spine, another long sandy beach that doubles as a back road and countless stilted vacation homes standing tall and mostly empty. We travelled an enormous 17 miles to get to our next stop: Crystal Beach.
This is not so much a town as a ‘holiday place’ -a five mile stretch of un-centred, beach focused civilisation that for ten months a year has lovely warm (or searingly hot and humid) weather, teems with people and where all the businesses are open. January and February are different. We had hit the short ‘off season’ and here, more than anywhere else we had stopped en route so far this trip, this was truly evident.
Despite a low grade inhabitation of Crystal Beach it generally felt deserted and desolate. There were definately some RV parks hosting ‘Winter Texans’ – the northern escapees – but I am not sure where they were or what they do here at this time of year.
We stopped at the approproately ‘Big Store’ to stock up on provisions. This was a retail establishment that seemed to sell absolutely everything bar three piece suites or suits (although there was one aisle that we missed – so perhaps they did). Our camp was quite large, centred around a small lake, and nearly empty. The bathroom block was an aged portacabin and out of action. All the machines in the simarly housed laundry were broken and awaiting repair. It wasn’t our finest camp selection, but it was a base for a few days and yer gotta be somewhere. On the up-side it was quiet, we had an enormous, grassy, lake side site with no near neighbours, it had some amusing ducks and the sunsets were spectaular.
Our time here, four nights, was a couple of nights too many in retrospect but we are very adept filling our days doing very little. We went for a long walk down the beach one day. Our route took us past many of the ubiquitous stilt homes. Building atop 20ft stout stilts is very impressive and absolutely necessary here. There are no ground level buildings except a few large industrial ones and there is a reason for that. Everything that wasn’t on stilts has been destroyed in one of the many destructive hurricaines and when the rebuilds happen, its on stilts. It’s Darwinism for real estate.
The highlight of our time here was an aftenoon in one of the few bars that was open and we went to watch some ‘football’. Of course I mean American football. The game where the ball very rarely touches any feet so really should be called something else. Like ThrowCatchRunBall. Or StopStartAnd Cut To AdvertsBall (A one hour game usually last three hours with only about ten to fifteen minutes of active play). I’m going to suggest it to the powers that be. Anyway – I digress – We cycled the 1.5 miles along the main road to the bar, locked the bikes to a handy stilt and watched the last semi-final of the Super Bowl competion with a small group of Crystal Beach locals. We ate suprisingly good pub food and had a jolly afternoon. There was even a ‘lock-in’ as the game finished an hour after usual closing time and we made it home before dark without incident.
Our original plan for this part of the trip had been to stay on the coast, but we realised that there isn’t enough to do and the weather isn’t good enough to make the most of the beach. Another rainy day here reinforced our decision to ditch the coast and head inland to find some civilisation and a better camp that had some functioning facilities. Next stop Louisiana and a final farewell to the huge slab of this planet that calls itself Texas.
