Bass Fishing in Texas II - The Trip

Things are quite different from my last entry made in January. It is now March, I am again drinking coffee this morning, and it is still dark outside at 3 a.m. as you would expect. The weather is clear with a waxing gibbous moon at 94% full and the temperature is 64°.  I’m still thinking about bass fishing in Texas, but I am in Florida.  Let me tell you how things could change so drastically.

A few days after Christmas, before New Year day, we started to Texas for the winter. Since my wife and I had spent the winter in Port Isabel Texas last winter, we decided to return there. We wanted to spend the winter in a warmer climate and had decided to do some bass fishing while we were there this year.  One of my brothers and his wife wanted to take their RV, travel with us, and spend the winter also. We really had some great plans that almost turned into an exodus.

We almost had our own caravan.  I drive an F150 super crew cab, 4×4, with an aluminum camper shell that has carrying racks over the short bed.  On top of my truck, tied down to the carrying racks, I had a 15′9″ aluminum Jon boat.  Inside the camper shell, we had a large barbecue grill on wheels, a trolling motor, two trolling motor batteries, lawn chairs, tools, and so on. We were pulling a 30 foot RV trailer with slide.  My brother was driving a diesel GMC 2500 super crew pulling a 27 foot fifth wheel RV with slide. In the bed of his truck, he was carrying a 4 hp Mercury outboard motor, gas tank, lawn chairs, and so on.  I am sure we presented quite an unusual picture, as we passed or were passed, on our journey.

We traveled about 1250 miles through Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas to reach our destination.  We set a relatively leisurely pace, generally stopped early, and traveled a maximum of 420 miles on any day.  As I only get about 8 miles per gallon pulling my RV, we made many stops.  We had three overnights and arrived in Port Isabel Texas mid afternoon of the fourth day.  Our communication, between trucks, was by walkie-talkies given to me by one of my daughters as a Christmas present.  They proved to be very handy.  The only problem we encountered was when I had a tire blowout on my RV.  That situation was taken care of by simply calling for emergency roadside service through a subscription I had made with a leading RV club.  That subscription turned out to be a top value.

The trip proved to be a little more expensive than anticipated, primarily due to the cost of fuel.  But I had taken some steps to help alleviate that expense.  I am considered a frugal guy and knew why budget and how to budget, so I put that knowledge to work.  I had previously obtained a credit card with rewards which gave me 5% back on fuel.  At about three dollars a gallon, that amounts to about $.15 per gallon.  Most people will go out of their way to save $.15 per gallon.  I also joined a discount camping club.  That club allows me to save 50% off of the regular camping fees.  These things, along with my emergency roadside service subscription, help me to control my travel expenses.

We arrived at our campground in Port Isabel Texas at about 1:30 p.m. New Year’s Day.  We were ready for some Texas bass fishing.  More later.