I was walking back from having a shower when the owner of Sea Breeze RV park, Otto, flagged me down in one of his vintage 1960 Corvettes. He wanted to know if Rob and I would like to come see all of his classic cars. He was showing someone else too and thought I might like to take some photos – uh, yeah!
He had us meet at a secret location where he showed us EIGHT classic corvettes, all predating us. He has one that he’s redone with a new 2007 chassis on a 1961 body, it’s gorgeous! They’re all lovingly restored to perfection and he’s been featured in Corvette magazines and car shows for his efforts.
He also has 5 or 6 (I lost count) old Chevelles and a Modal A that is Dora’s (his wife). He owned it previously and sold it, and she was very upset as it was her favorite car. 10 years later it was up for sale, so he bought it back and gave it to her. We didn’t se any of these cars, we were told they are at another location.
I took a few photos, but it’s hard to make art inside a dark building with no lighting control. I was formulating ideas for a photo shoot on the beach though.
Dora and Otto have had an interesting life, it seems. If I had to guess their age I’d say late 60’s, maybe 70 (they have a son 5 years older than me). They’ve done cotton farming, have some cattle, own a palm tree farm, a car wash, and an RV park. But he’s quick to tell us “we’re not wealthy you know”. Rob cracked up at that one. Maybe they aren’t wealthy, according to Otto, but they do pretty well we think. Their stories are great, we enjoy listening to them and they seem to enjoy showing their cars (they take great pride in them) and telling tales.
Being it was Valentine’s Day, and it was sunny and warm, we took the afternoon off and went to the beach over at Port Aransas on Padre Island. There’s two ways to get over to it – a short ferry ride, or around the long way driving through Corpus Christi. We took the ferry.
The beach was fairly busy, but not overly so. We parked on the sand and walked around for a bit and vowed to bring the RV over to camp on the beach for at least one night at some point.
We ate a late lunch at sort of the first place we found – not a great idea. Mostly all deep fried fish, shrimp, oysters and fries. Texans really like to deep fry stuff – well pretty much everything including, get this – cheesecake! But they did have a salad bar! LOL. Texans are among the states with the highest obesity rates – not hard to see why.
Continuing on south west on the island, we popped into Pioneer RV park, which was recommended to us. It’s very nice and a short walk to the beach (over the sand dunes), but at premium prices. It reinforced our park choice, we’re very pleased with Sea Breeze RV.
The last stop was to try and get a sunset, but we were on the wrong side of the island and you can’t get to the west side as it’s a closed area (national park). There isn’t any beaches facing the bay really anyway. So we stopped at Mustang Island Park. This is the view from there as the sun set.
What, you don’t like oysters???
I love the effect with the blurry edges (forgive my un-professional lingo!)
On “Texans are among the states with the highest obesity rates – not hard to see why.” … Everything’s big in Texas, right?
Great pics as usual, thanks for sharing!
I love oysters – where did you see I don’t like oysters? wait for the Oysterfest post coming soon. Well later. We each ate 2 dozen raw ones.
OH!!! No I was bitter cause we ate at a crappy place with all deep fried shit, and THEN we found the place with the raw ones but we’d eaten already. We went back there another day and had some.
Awesome images – love the sea foam ones.
What’s the Photoshop filter?
Topaz labs plug-in suite, it’s pretty cool. Look closely at the shot of the pier (underneath) and the 4th one down on the page with the blue one (hood opened) and you can see some of the things it does. Effects, but also noise reduction, contrast in ways curves can do, enhance details (small, medium or large ones) – it’s pretty cool
oh they announced PS CS5 will be released mid April at Photoshop world. Some really cool stuff in it – HDR is improved, noise way better, etc. Stuff you have plug-ins for now PS will do better finally. I might actually buy this upgrade.
Was thinking of getting Topaz to add to the onOne software that I also got. Thing is, too many choices on what to do with images can sometimes stop decisions from being made – or multiple variations! To think, once all we had to decide was whether we liked an image in Colour or B&W!
Saw that CS5 was on its way – been reading all the trainers’ blogs.
I didn’t want to fork out for On One, too pricey. They had the whole Topaz suite on for $129 at the conference so I got it. One thing that’s a PITA is that it’s 7 different programs. They install all at once and I registered and put in the code – or so I thought. But you have to register each one separately! I asked support about it and they said it was necessary – annoying I say.
Good price for Topaz – bummer about their registration process.
I got onOne at a reduced price when they released their new version. They still have a promo running:
http://www.ononesoftware.com/landing/2010/03/suite5/landing.php?utm_campaign=Ste5_enews_0310&utm_medium=email&utm_source=enews&utm_content=save200
You still going to be in Florida on April 5th? Next shuttle launch: http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/buy-tickets.aspx
We head to Savannah tomorrow but are coming back for the launch. It’s on Rob’s bucket list.
$399 for On One, really? That’s better than their show price which was $469 I think.
If you want the Topaz suite, email me and I have a discount code for 25% off that I didn’t use. Makes is $134 I think.
It launches at 6:20 am on Monday morning, so we’re making the 5 hour drive back from Savannah, staying up around the clock to see it launch and then either catching a nap in the car for a few hours or getting a cheap hotel for a nap. Then driving back to Savannah.
They say that you first see the launch, then hear it, then feel it. I want to be close enough to experience all three of those.
Nice Vettes !
It gets better Darwin. I’ve got some video of me interviewing the owner about his 61 on top of the 2007 drive train. Plus Dar has some HDR of a photoshoot she did with the vettes out on the beach.
FYI for all Young Snowbirds readers: Road Trip calendars for 2011 are now available on my site. I had so many images and requests to have them that I have created a calendar of some of my favorites from the road. You can see all the images in the calendar and order one on my photography blog at: http://www.herviewphotography.com/2010/09/30/road-trip-2011-calendars.html