Off the road, the van got fluffed — first the chassis, so now she rides better — then the coach, and that is still in testing. Chassis have remained about the same; coaches not. There’s not a USB port in the van, which marks the era of its technology. The radical revolution in outfitting has largely tracked the global revolution from “petrostate” to “electrostate”. Most new coaches are largely electric. Propane is for fun – the barbecue, the fire pit, or the black slate griddle. Refrigerator, hot water, heating, have all moved to electric with lithium battery banks, solar panels, inverters, chargers, robust alternators, sometimes dual alternators. It’s all shaking electrons out of their storage cubbies.

This transition creates a problem for me as I get to the end-of-life for some of the house machinery. The most important is the refrigerator as the classic absorption refrigerator that used propane or electricity (in either flavor, AC if plugged in or DC if running from the onboard electrical storage) is fading from the market. My refrigerator is getting winky. It worked fabulously on the trip south using propane. I could be totally independent. I am now testing to see if I can be independent without it working reliably on propane.

Off the road, I too got fluffed. Now I can see much better after surgery, but like some of the van items, I worry that I am coming to the end-of-service life for my eyes. Fingers, not eyes, crossed, that the last repair will be lasting and no new issues will pop up. Driving is much easier and I feel more confident at night. Photography is a little problem but the question there, like the van, is whether it is adapting to a change in technology. The eye-piece on a camera really encourages focus to frame an image; the large screen of the iPhone makes framing more challenging. To shift focus from near to far, from three dimensions to two, while often peering through a reflection, makes the experience feel more haphazard. The glory, however, lies in the digital processing magic that allows for photography in conditions one could only imagine with film only to hope that one could rescue the latent image in the lab when pushing film to its limits.

At the campsite on my shakedown, a deep earth thrum more felt than heard with its persistence got my attention. Darkness had fallen. A moonless, clouded sky darkness, made more stark by backlights of an industrial site to the west. The thrum seemed to come from the east in the channel where the LNG tankers and other fuel carriers traverse to head for the terminals at Freeport. The thrum came from a huge ship, its outline barely visible but with lights defined bow and stern. Seemingly self-aware, unconcerned with anything around it, the ship made passage through the cut and navigated the turn. There was no sound of a wake crashing against the tumbled rip-rap of the breakwater or channel boundaries. Just a mammoth ship moving to the terminal.

Having a recreational beach and campground on the edge of an industrial site has become one of the hallmarks of the Third Coast, as some locals like to call it. “You got your West Coast, your East Coast, and we are the Third Coast. Sometimes forgotten.” The industry is all petrochemical, or sometimes, surprisingly, a lingering fishing fleet usually shrimpers. People drive on many of the beaches and camping waterside is not unusual, especially towards the east on the Louisiana and Texas coasts. Along with recreation in the shadows or, more startlingly, the bright, unshaded, industrial lighting on the pipework and the decks of the ships, lie areas for passionate birders. The great migratory paths cross here. The ranger on check-in remarked that birders hope for “the wall” when atmospheric conditions create a northern wind from Texas hinterlands. The migratory birds from the lower Americas begin to tire on reaching the Texas coast, and if the northerly breeze is up, it is a wall for the exhausted avians. They must rest and the birders have a field day spotting, and photographing, not with little phones but with 18, 24 or seemingly 36 inch lenses attached to cameras the size of lunch boxes.

This campground has been the South for me. Extreme contradiction with very little middle. Generosity and kindness but lingering unease towards outsiders. A seashore, barrier islands, and desolate swamps for miles, then a sudden industrial site. Warmth and judgement; magnificence and plunder.