You might be thinking to yourself, “hey, I thought these guys told me they were going abroad?” I can assure you that we still plan to! But first, a quick detour.

We arrived in San Antonio last weekend with a bit of flu-like symptoms, but only planning to stay ~4-5 days while we took in the city with our good friend Sean and finished up a couple of projects to make the van fully livable. Sean even took Friday off to show us around. Unfortunately, he spent much of that day and then the weekend re-watching the first season of ‘The Hart of Dixie’ while the two of us alternated naps (we also spent one unlucky evening watching a Vikings game…). Bless Sean, as he was gracious and patient and brought food and medicine while we slowly recovered. And so while we had intended to cross the border this week, we didn’t complete the van until Friday and did not want to cross the border on the weekend as we heard it could be a bit more hectic then.

So now we’re on Mustang Island instead, just about 30 minutes east of Corpus Christi - a great suggestion by Sean. Visitors can drive directly onto this section of beach and camp, a perfect setup to test our now fully functional van. And test it we did, with scattered showers and wind the first day we alternated lovely walks on the beach (with sea turtle and pelican sightings along the way) and cozying up in our van, where we remained nice and dry (except for a very cuddly but slightly damp dog). So cozy that we fell asleep at an hour that would make even our parents say “You went to bed that early?!”

Mollusks and shells we found washed up on the shore that caught Vrinda's eye.

And we woke up in the sea!! I got up to let the dog out and opened the door to see our sandals about ready to float away, with water streaming past the van to the area behind us. I look back and only see a decent-sized tide pool, forward and see the ocean, to my right and see cars parked much farther back on the beach. The only consolation is looking to my left, where several other cars are parked parallel to us; at least if we go down, we’ll all go down together. Once I got over the initial shock, we checked the tide forecast and confirmed that exact minute was literally peak tide which, combined with the rainy day, resulted in the two inches of water beneath our car. Not in any actual danger, but quite a surprise for our first full weekend in the van! Hopefully our time in Mexico is a little less hair-raising!