Texas 2024:
Day 3 - Brownsville, TX
Day 3 - Brownsville, TX
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Friday, April 12, 2024: What a beautiful day! We slept in a little, for us anyway, and didn't leave the hotel until 8:30 AM. |
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Our first stop was for a much-needed car wash at the Speedy Stop which was right next door to the hotel. Good thing the attendent sprayed for bugs on the grill. There were at least a million moths, butterflies, dragonflies, bees, and other flying creatures smashed onto the front of the van. |
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After getting gas, our next stop was at Taco Palenque for breakfast. |
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Tom ordered the potato and egg burrito, and Debbie ordered the potato and chorizo burrito. She remembered at the last minute to ask them to hold the beans, which was very important. Apparently every burrito in Texas has beans, even if they don't put it on the menu. |
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We also got two pieces of tres leches cake for dessert, which we put in the cooler and saved for later. |
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When we reached San Antonio, we admired the abstract art that they installed throughout the city. Oh, wait, those are new highway segments waiting to be completed. Still, they were very beautiful to look at. |
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One of the reasons we had slept in was because we had a stop this morning at the Shops at La Cantera Mall that didn't open until 11:00 AM. What could it be? |
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The new LEGO Store in San Antonio, of course. This store opened about ten minutes after we left Texas after our last trip here in 2023 (actually, it was nine months), so of course we had to stop on this trip. We were there a little before the store opened, so we pressed our faces against the glass and looked at the models they had on display. We admired the technique used to build this escalator, ... |
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... and loved the big dragon minifig sculpture. The minifig was holding an egg, ... |
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... that was just starting to hatch! Squeee! |
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The LEGO Friends sets are so creative. This one is named Isabela's Flowerpot and has a tiny house built into the flower pot. This would be a fun project to create with the grandkids. |
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The store opened right at 11:00 AM and we went straight to the Pick & Build wall. While Debbie looked over the bricks and made her selections, ... |
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... one of the store employees talked to Tom about the Technic GT model that he had just put together for their floor display. He showed Tom the working pistons when the vehicle rolled, and the independent suspension when you pushed down on the car. It made Tom really think about buying the set. |
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Unfortunately, Tom had already seen this LEGO City Command Rover set and couldn't think about buying anything else. We didn't buy it this time though. There would be more LEGO stores on this trip and we wanted to spread the LEGO love around. |
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Check out the giant unicorn minifig sculpture at the Build-A-Minifig station. |
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Debbie had filled her two small LEGO cups (yes, they still had cups!) and gotten her LEGO Passport stamp, ... |
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... and we made our way back to our van to continue the drive south. |
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We drove past the University of Texas at San Antonio campus as we drove back to I-10, ... |
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... and headed through downtown San Antonio, ... |
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... and past the exit for Joint Base San Antonio - Lackland. Debbie's Aunt Carol had been stationed here when she was in the Air Force, and Debbie sent this photo to her after we drove by. |
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Tom's sharp eyes noticed that there were fuzzy caterpillers trying to cross the highway as we drove past. It took a while for Debbie to see them, but once she did, she looked them up and determined that they were saltmarsh caterpillers. |
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We stopped at Whataburger for lunch and were able to resist the Dr. Pepper shakes this time. Yay for us! |
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As we continued our drive south, Debbie got out her Pick & Build purchases and looked over the pieces that she had gotten. |
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Somewhere between Corpus Christi and Brownville, we passed a static display of an A-4 Skyhawk, ... |
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... and saw our first cacti of the trip. There were large clumps of them all over the area, and many of them were in bloom. Beautiful! |
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Just before 4:00 PM, we reached the resort town of Rancho Viejo, ... |
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... and passed a holding area for wind turbine blades. There were dozens of them in this large area just off the highway. |
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We arrived in Brownsville, Texas, right at 4:00 PM, and passed this cool statue outside the Port of Brownsville. |
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We drove to our hotel, the Quality Inn on Texas Highway 48. |
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We had a lovely room with garden tub, a king bed, a couch, and a desk. |
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After getting our stuff settled, we got back in the van and drove toward the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica. We passed some space-themed establishments, like this Saturn Munchies restaurant, ... |
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... and this new gas station at the corner of Indiana Avenue and Texas Highway 4 at the amusingly named ... |
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... Launchpad Crossing. This was still under construction when we were here 15 months ago. |
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Oooh. Rocket! |
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This was new. There was a SpaceX employee shuttle parking lot at the last intersection before you leave Brownsville. One section of the lot was filled with Teslas. |
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Starbase straight ahead. |
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It was just after 5:00 PM, and the line for the Border Patrol inspection station at the exit of Highway 4 stretched for miles as people were leaving the facility at the end of the work day. |
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Massey's Gun Range had a sign up for their new location. When we were last here, SpaceX had recently purchased the land at their original location and was in the process of turning it into a Starship testing facility. |
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There had been infrastructure changes since our last visit. These power lines were all new, and we suspected that the concrete pipes were here in preparation for some drainage projects that were upcoming. |
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There was a new sign up for the Starship testing site at the old Massey's facility. |
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We passed an employee shuttle bus, and the sign in the window identified it as Starbus #4. |
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We thought this old sign for the Monica Subdivision was a little more overgrown, ... |
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... while the Ad Astra school for the children of SpaceX employees looked like it had some more landscaping work done. |
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This was new. It was a large staging area ... |
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... for some of the materials needed for all of the construction going on at Starbase. |
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The road had been under repair when we were last here, and the new road was a much-needed improvement. We could see the production facility off to the left as we rounded the last corner and left the trees and bushes behind. |
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Off to the south, we could see what looked like new home construction going on right along the Rio Grande. They looked like executive homes, or maybe they would be SpaceX VIP viewing areas. Only time will tell. |
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There was an advertisement for helicopter tours of the SpaceX facility. These hadn't been available on our previous visits as far as we knew. What a great idea! |
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There had been lots of changes to the production facility since our last visit. The big white building right at the edge of the facility wasn't here last time. That's the new Ground Fabrication Building, and it takes the place of the outdoor welding and construction stations west of Remedios Avenue. |
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They built a new megabay in the last year. It's the large gray building on the far left. |
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We were a little surprised to see the Stargate building still here, but they probably still need it for office space until their new building is complete. |
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This is the Starfactory. It replaces the four large white tents that used to be here. The building is massive, and curves to match the road, which is a very subtle but cool effect. |
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We're guessing there is going to be a SpaceX logo on that unfinished end of the building. |
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Right outside the entrance to the megabays, there were other SpaceX fans just like us taking photos of the facility. |
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This is the Lab Padre Rover Cam, and it is parked right outside the entrance as well. |
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Just east of the Starfactory is where the new office building is being constructed. |
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There was an entire neighborhood of tiny houses along the roadside. That was a field of solar panels the last time we were here, but they probably weren't needed after Starbase was hooked up to the Brownsville electrical grid. |
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The SpaceX employee restaurant was still there with its patio of food trucks. |
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This is another of Lab Padre or NASASpaceFlight's camera towers. It's amazing that SpaceX embraces the streaming media coverage as much as it does. |
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We pulled off at our usual location to get a shot of the launch facility when another car pulled up behind us. While Debbie was taking their photo for them, they mentioned that this was their first trip here and that they had just taken the helicopter tour of the SpaceX facility by Redline Helicopter Tours. They highly recommended it so we will definitely do that next time we are here, but high winds were moving in so it wasn't safe this time. |
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Tom snapped a few photos of his own after they left, ... |
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... including this one of the new Gateway to Mars sign, which he was especially excited to see. |
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This entire entrance was new, and we really liked the SpaceX logo over it. |
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They had also put up a more permanent fence between Highway 4 and the launch facility. |
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The fueling farm had been beefed up as well. |
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You could see where construction crews were still building the rebar cage for more of the permanent concrete wall, ... |
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... and where the temporary, but still beautiful, fence was. |
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Sadly, there wasn't a booster or ship on the launchpad this time. They had performed a static fire of Booster 11 a few days before and had rolled it back to the production facility about the time that we had started our drive down here. |
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They were still replenishing the methane and oxygen from that static fire test, although we're pretty sure that's a process that never stops. |
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We got a glimpse of the bunker where they store the explosives used by the flight termination systems on both the booster and the ship. |
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The ever-blowing sand has covered the grafitti on the concrete barriers between the end of the SpaceX facility and Boca Chica Beach. |
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We turned around at the beach and headed back west. We really like this photo because of the man in the bottom right corner. He's got a big smile on his face and he's looking right at Debbie as we drove by taking photos. It's clear that they are cool about the space nerds who come here to watch them work. |
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We parked near the new entrance to the launch pad and looked out over the dry land to the north. When we have come here in January, this area has been covered with water. It was completely dry now, and we could see what looked like launch pad debris that had been blown here by the failure of the concrete under the launch pad with the first test flight. |
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Here's a closer look at the larger piece of debris. There were small bits and not-so-small bits of concrete out there as well. |
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Near the entrance was a shuttle bus stop and workers waiting to be picked up. You can trust SpaceX to make even the bus stop look cool. |
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The Civil War battle monument now had a protective fence around it. That was new. |
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As we approached the production site again, we noticed that the huge tracking dishes were also gone. We had an unobstructed view of the building where they store the payload adapters that will be used to launch Starlink satellites once Starship is operational. |
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We decided to drive into what used to be Boca Chica Village. This is the Hub, a private SpaceX employee hangout. |
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Parked outside was a SpaceX on-site shuttle. They have quite an infrastructure here, not just for their buildings but for the entire community of people who live and work here. |
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At another nearby hangout, there were people on swings in the background, ... |
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... and a basketball hoop in the back (not visible here). |
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There was an entire neighborhood of tiny houses, ... |
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... and what looked like new houses mixed in with the original houses of Boca Chica Village. |
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These were definitely newer houses. |
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Cybertruck! |
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We were a little baffled by the two sets of house numbers. One appeared to be the original street address, but there was another five digit number on the newer houses that we didn't understand. A SpaceX unit number maybe? |
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This house had their house number on both sides of the house. Strange. |
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There were two Airstream villages. This grouping was named Mars Pathfinder and contained smaller trailers, ... |
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... and this one had larger trailers and was named Valle Marineris. As far as we can tell, every one had a Starlink dish. |
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So many trailers. So much money. |
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As you'd expect, there were lots of Teslas in driveways. |
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Look at the tiny Cybertruck. It's so wee! |
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Here's another example of the different house numbering schemes. |
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There were more tiny houses along the northern wetlands boundary. These had what appeared to be sundecks on their roofs. |
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Even the newly-constructed homes had their brick painted gray to blend in. Debbie calls this matte black-gray brick-white color scheme "2020 Flip" since every house that has been built, renovated, or redecorated since 2020 has used the exact same color scheme. This won't look dated in 20 years, no sir. |
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So much housing being built. A new row of homes was going up on a new street further back. |
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The street signs had Starship outlines on them. Is Memes Street a new street name or an existing one from original village? |
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There were sections of drainage pipe stacked up going off to the horizon, either for the housing that was going in or for the office building that was being built. How many construction projects are going on simultaneously here? |
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We saw a barrel section for another ship sitting next to a new nose cone outside the Starfactory as we ended our tour of the village. |
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There was another Cybertruck parked outside the restaurant when we drove by. |
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Here's another view of the eastern end of the Starfactory, ... |
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... and the western end as it pushes up against the highbay and the two megabays. |
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A new parking structure will be built here soon, likely blocking the view of the tiki hut and the rocket garden, but for now, we can still see the future Starships lined up waiting their turn to launch. |
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Nice license plate! |
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The Starbase sign was covered up with parked employee cars and we couldn't get a good view of it ... for now. |
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As we drove out of Starbase and headed back to Brownsville, we noticed that the Rocket Ranch had upgraded their road sign. It was still a rough dirt road leading to their campground and RV park, though. |
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We're pretty sure this road leading to the Port of Brownsville had been upgraded since our last visit. |
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The queue for the Border Patrol inspection station was small and moving fast when we reached it. It only took a few minutes for us to get through the line and be cleared to drive away. |
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We passed the Lunar Estates subdivision on our way back to our hotel. This had been a "coming soon" sign the last time we were here, ... |
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... and now there were houses. Actual houses! Wow! |
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Back in our hotel room, we ate the last of the sandwiches that we'd made for our eclipse party and brought with us on the trip, as well as part of the tres leches cake we'd gotten at Taco Palenque that morning. What a great day it had been! |
Copyright © Deborah Schilling/Thomas Bundy