Definition of NOMAD – persons who do not stay long in the same place; wanderers.

We’ve learned so much along the way in the past 8 months! One of the first is that the cost of Nomading is much cheaper if you stay a month in any one location. Monthly rates are usually about 50% cheaper than daily rates and you just pay electricity which has amounted to pretty much nothing even with the air conditioner running constantly. But, up till now a month in one place has pretty much been the max. We’ve stayed in an area longer but moved from one park to another.

Quick 2024 Year in Review – We left May 1st, we’ve travelled 12,??? Miles, camped in 13 States. We have a New Truck Transmission, we’ve repaired 2 flat tires, have a new stabilizer, a New Air Conditioner Control Board, a New Furnace Fan. Done many hikes, Highest point Wolfe Creek Pass Colorado, Lowest point Sea Level Corpus Cristi.

Now we are in Corpus Cristi and the plan was to stay in one park for 3 months and pass a warmer winter down here. But, when we got here we decided this isn’t a park we want to stay for 3 months so on day 2 we found a great new location on the water. I guess we got spoiled at Rockaway! We checked in to Colonia del Rey on December 5th and we will check out on the 30th and move to the Firefly resort about 3 miles away (picture to follow in the next blog). The most positive thing about where we are parked is that we have a nice view all the way to the water out the back window. We’ve seen a deer and various birds hanging out there. Theo has had a blast hiding on the couch and bird watching. Here is a little gallery of our current situation:

Need to back up here for just a minute and go back to Rockaway. We had a nice Friendsgiving. We ended up being a group of 8. Good food, Joel made his Nanny’s dressing, which was a hit! We had a really nice lunch with Kerry and Ken who live in Llano, we met them in Colorado. Turns out they knew some of Joel’s relatives and actually had a vintage Truck restored by one of his cousins. Super people that we will stay in touch with. We didn’t get a great picture of all 4 of us but I’ll include one of Kerry and me and the cactus that she give us from her garden. We also got together with Kristine (wine buddy from Washington) and David her husband twice. So much fun connecting with her and meeting David. We did some great tastings at a few of their favorite places. We’ve been super impressed with some of the Texas wines we’ve tasted. Highly recommend William Chris wines! We’ve also been super impressed with some of the hospitality experiences we’ve had. If you get a chance to visit Fredericksburg do it. Here are the pictures I can find. Fell down on the job of pictures for this chapter.

Ok so back to the present! Corpus Cristi has some beautiful beaches close by mostly on Padre Island. So many awesome birds that we haven’t seen anywhere else. Looking forward to seeing the Whooping Cranes. They come down here for the winter too! We can see the bridge to Padre from where we are staying. We’ve been going for a walk pretty much every morning on a great beach we found that is about 6 minutes away. Corpus Cristi is really a pretty big place spread out with one suburb running into another. It’s the 8th most populous city in Texas with a population of about 500,000. It’s a lot bigger than I imagined! We drove through downtown on the way to find a renaissance festival in Ingleside which is north of the city. We also passed the Aquarium and the USS Lexington which we plan to visit. We are staying south of the city in an area called Flour Bluff. We’ve also visited Port Aransas which is very nice and we will be going back over the next few months. Looking forward to visiting the University of Texas Marine Science Institute out there and we’ve heard there is a great Italian restaurant that’s on our list. Here is a photo dump of our adventures here so far:

Beach walks:

Port Aransas:

Renaissance Festival and our drive through downtown:

Hard to believe Christmas is a few days away. We ordered a small prime rib and will lay out a mini feast for us to enjoy. It’ll be sad not to be with family but Joel and I have both had to spend it alone before, and we’re not alone because we have each other! So happy we do! We’re looking forward to our 6 year anniversary and Joel’s birthday in January. Will be ready for our move to Firefly on the 30th and will celebrate New Years Eve and stay there until March 5th when we start making our way towards Tucson to see Marilyn. Then we will be working our way North back to Washington. Homeward bound for our one year Nomad anniversary. What’s next, stay tuned and we will let you know.

Merry Christmas from all of us! Me, Joel, Finn, Theo, Betty and the Frey. Hoping 2025 will be good to us all! Cheers