Saturday, April 9 - Bridgette told us yesterday that on graduation day in May, Corpus also has some kind of marathon relay, and they shut down the bridge from South Padre Island into Corpus. We are camped just passed this bridge, so she thought we would probably want to stay in a campground closer to downtown when we come back, so this morning we picked them up at Megan's and drove toward downtown to check out a few campgrounds. We came up with two pretty good possibilities, one much like a parking lot, but it is right on the bay. The other is just across the Harbor Bridge, and it goes down to the water. This one is called Sea Breeze, and that's probably where we will try to stay in May.
Then we stopped for lunch and decided to go out and catch the Blue Angels performance at the Air Show. We got out there about 2:00, and they were scheduled around 3:00. They had shuttle buses taking us from the parking area to the air strip, but we got right on and then walked around and looked at some of the planes. This show was no where near the magnitude of the one in Anchorage, but the Blue Angels are always worth seeing.
It was really windy again today, and there was some low clouds, but we did get to see a couple demonstrations in the air, and we looked over some of the planes on the ground. This air show was honoring the Navy's 100 years of air support.
There was a pretty good crowd, all getting sunburned. John and Bridgette both were a little red by the end of the day. We saw some black smoke over by the runway, then the fire trucks go that direction. I tried to get a picture of the smoke, but I missed it. We later heard that one of the Blue Angel planes had caught on fire (#3).
They finally announced that there was going to be a 10-15 minute break, then the Blue Angels would perform, so we found a place to sit and wait for the big event.
Finally, they sent Fat Albert up, as a precursor to the Blue Angels, and he made a few fly-bys. Fat Albert is the support/maintenance plane for the Blue Angels.
Then they started the final check of the Blue Angel planes and introduced the crew and pilots. One of the planes, #3, apparently had some kind of problems probably from the fire, and they finally towed it out of line and brought in #7, their back-up plane.
So #7 joined the rest of them on the taxi way, and #1 took off and made a couple trips around the airfield. It was very windy and cloudy, and they announced that there was going to be a 10-minute delay, but the weather was clearing. So we waited some more. Finally, the ground vehicles came back out on the field and they announced over the speakers that the Blue Angels performance was canceled because of the weather. They hoped to be able to perform tomorrow, but we will be gone by then, so we didn't get to see them this time. John and Bridgette had never been to an air show, and we were really hoping they would get to see them because they are absolutely Awesome, but it was not to be today. So then we got to wait in line for the shuttle buses for almost an hour. We were pretty tired by then and glad to call it a day.
Megan and Brian graciously invited us all over for a cookout tonight, and she make an angel food cake so Bridgette had a graduation cake. We had a very enjoyable evening with them, then went back to the RV for the night, turning our car over to the kids again.
This morning I got my laundry caught back up, and Joe washed the front windshield and put some more tape on his side window, still trying to track down that whistle. The kids came out for breakfast and we had a nice visit with them before dropping them at the Corpus Christi airport about 11:30. So far, their flights were still scheduled to fly, so they are hoping to make it back to Tampa today. After we dropped them, we headed out of town and made it to Giddings, 223 miles, with the wind beating on us all day long. We are about an hour from College Station, and we plan on driving through Texas A&M's main campus there tomorrow before leaving the area, since we now have two Aggie graduates.
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