Day 13 (6/8/21)-- miles traveled:~460

Location: Sargent Beach, TX

Science: air quality at RV park right on the water -- RVers who had been there days earlier reported that whatever was in the air coming off of the water had made everyone sneeze ad cough, but while I was there it seemed fine -- onshore wind continuous and strong.

This spot is where I encountered my second brisket (after Homer, GA) master -- Dave occupied the massive RV (complete with back grillling/smoking porch) parked right beside my tiny trailer and would not hear of me not sampling his prodigious array of personally raised/fed/butchered/processed/prepared meats. These included ham, brisket, pulled pork, hamburgers, and bologne. Yes. Bologne. 

But before we get into that any further, I should describe the drive into Sargent Beach -- it was really beautiful and full of bayous, intracoastal waterways, and houses on stilts. Many of the houses looked new or newly remodeled, which I assumed was because of recent hurricane damage. 

As I neared Sargent Beach itself, an obviously brand-new bridge structure loomed above the houses and waterways -- and I do mean loomed -- it was massive and hard to capture in photos (but see below for my best, quasi-safe attempts to capture it).

The views from this massive bridge/weird highway structure were incredible, clearly demonstrating the low-lying lands that comprise the surrounding geography -- 

When I pulled into Sargent Beach RV park, I was really REALLY looking forward to a nice shower and doing laundry. After situating myself carefully between two massive RV's I strolled over to the office and asked where the bathrooms were. "It's an RV park," the manager replied. "You are really supposed to be bringing your own bathroom with you. We are on an island and can't manage the extra water and sewage use -- sorry -- it is pretty clearly stated on our website, though."

I had to think for a minute. How could I manage this without possibly having to back out with that trailer at that moment? And my reservation was non-refundable.......as I was thinking and cursing and thinking some more, the manage piped up and pointed to the public beach about 1/4 mile from the site. "You know, they do have porta-potties there that you could use." 

And so I got a lot of exercise that night. And no shower. But then, Dave in the huge RV, wearing a "You May Be a RedNeck Dad if...." t-shirt, came to distract me from my disappointment. "What's that thing you got there?" he asked, pointing at the deployed air quality sensor, "Cable TV?" Which was a question I am growing very accustomed to at this point -- at Manatee Springs someone asked if I would be nice enough to share the WiFi password from what they thought was a heavy-duty satellite/internet antenna.

I answered Dave's question, and then he was called away by his family because it was his turn in their dominos game. 10 minutes later, Dave was back with other questions about air quality. He then complimented me on the work I'd done on my teardrop, so I returned with "Your RV looks like a great set-up -- particularly that back porch there -- do you cook off of it?"

Dave promptly took me on a semi-mandatory tour of his AIR CONDITIONED RV. I felt awkward but it was about 85% relative humidity and close to 90degC outside and any misgivings I had were immediately dispelled. The RV was HUGE.  

And it turns out Dave and his wife are caterers and specialize in organic meats. I was then provided with a piece of brisket -- just handed to me, no plates, no napkins -- like the candy it truly is in Texas. It was awesome. Then came the homemade onion rings (ate them cold but still delicious) and some jerky. 

Then his wife came into the living room as we were standing there talking and said/grumbled "I see you have met my husband."  

She and Dave exchanged looks and he said -- "gotta get back to dominos!"

I went back to my trailer and decided that the brisket and onion rings were enough dinner -- I was exhausted and got ready for bed. After my hike back from the beach portapotties, Dave was waiting by my air quality sensor, beer in hand. "Doesn't look like you got any dinner!" he said, gesturing at my immaculately unused galley.

"Oh, I ate some stuff -- I'm good," I lied. 

He arched his eyebrows and said, "Well whatever it is, it can't have been as good as our burgers and bologne. Get your ass in here and I'll feed you some real food." 

Um. So I went. 

He fed me a cold burger, that I again ate with no plate and bare hands as he proudly shared the history of his and his wife's catering business. He told me that his grilling skills were shown off on some sort of site called "GrillPorn." I started thinking that even though the burger was DELICIOUS and the AC certainly luxurious, I might just need to get out of there if I wanted to get any sleep because he seemed to just be getting going.......then he had me taste his country ham, his bologne (all really great), and started crowing "Oh man, I am going to finish you off RIGHT." 

"I am definitely going to FINISH you OFF!" he replied, and pulled out some homemade strawberry ice cream. It was a perfect finish to the cold meat buffet I had just been treated to. But also I felt a big need to get out of there. I couldn't eat anything more and his voice was getting a bit louder. His wife came in and again was unsuccessful in dragging him back to their never ending dominos game. 

"Be careful," she said to me as she deposited dirty dinner dishes in the RV kitchen (that was the size of my own kitchen back in Kingston), "he can really talk."

"OK, OK, one last thing," he laughed, waving his beer in the air. "I like to think about big things, see, and I was wondering if you knew anything about the secret civilizations that live on the North and South Poles."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"You know, that's the reason we can't see all of the poles using google -- they don't want us to know that there are secret cities kept at a constant 60 degrees there."

That is when I made my gracious "Got to leave early tomorrow, so time for bed" exit. And leave EARLY I did.

Here are some pictures from the site:

This was a sign outside of the nearest grocery store: