3/11/11 – Padre Island NS

I went to Padre Island with my family when I was 10 or 11. We picked up hundreds of little tiny shells there. 

Now it's considered a National Seashore. Maybe it's the season, but there aren't so many shells now.

To get to Padre Island, we crossed the bridge from Aransas Pass, then took a little tiny (free!) ferry to Port Aransas and then drove down to Mustang Island, and finally Padre Island. Padre Island is the longest undeveloped barrier island in the world. The road ends just south of the Visitor Center, but you can drive the next 55 miles on the beach if you have a 4WD. Sometimes I wish we did...

We stopped at the Malaquite (pronounced "mal-a-keet") Visitor Center. There's a big pavilion with picnic tables, observations decks and a long ramp down to the beach. After signing in and getting the stamp in the passport book, we had lunch and walked around, waiting for 1:00 and the ranger's "Deck Talk". She brought out a big "touch table" with different kinds of things that had been found on the beaches there. There were lots of shells, of course, and "seabeans", seeds from plants all over the world that wash up on the beach—everything from pecans and coconuts to sea hearts and hamburger beans. (We found some green things when we were beachcombing later that the ranger told me were mangrove pods.)

Saw a lot of brown pelicans, migrating north from Mexico. (For some stupid reason I called them "penguins" once, then couldn't get it out of my mouth right! It's just a "P" bird name, I guess, but George has been teasing me.)  I've got a lot of pictures of blue sky with just a trail of birds across it.

We're too early for the sea turtles which come there to lay eggs. Volunteers find the nests, and take the eggs to incubators to protect them. When the baby turtles are born, they have releases and invite the public to come watch. That would be cool!

There weren't very many shells on the beach—maybe it's the season--but we did see a couple Portuguese man o'war, which is not a jellyfish but stings like one. They're actually kind of pretty, purple & blue. I'll bet a lot of little kids are attracted to the color, try to pick them up and get hurt.

We walked down the beach to where there were a lot of RV's dry camped on the shore. There was even someone with a horse trailer—riding horses on the beach would be cool.

On the way back home, we noted again that there are lots and lots and lots and LOTS of RV parks all around in Corpus Christi, Rockport, Aransas Pass & Port Aransas. I told George "Senior RV Parks" must be a moot point around here! The locals call the RVers "winter Texans". There are a lot of people from Canada around our park--mostly from Ontario which is due north. They seem to be rather clique-ish and not very friendly, unlike almost everyone else we've met on this trip. Weird.

Sorry--I'm having trouble uploading pictures to the blog--if you want to see more, go here:  Padre Island NS

3/10/11 - Aransas NWR

Aransas National Wildlife Refuge is the winter home of about 400 different kinds of birds, plus javalinas, deer, bobcat and alligators.   

It's north of where we're staying in Rockport--you have to cross a long causeway (the old highway has been turned into a verrry long fishing pier), then drive way out in the country through lots of bare cotton fields that go clear to the horizon and beyond. There were some big fires burning on the horizon, but we never did figure out what they were. I thought maybe clearing fields?

After the usual stop at the Visitor Center, we drove through the park, looking for birds and alligators. There are some walking trails through the sloughs and salt flats and oaks, so we went looking for birds. Mostly we didn't see them. ("Did you see that bird?" "Where?" "There—that little one!" "No, I didn't see it. What was it?" "A brown one."  "Where is it?"  "I don't know--it flew away...")

We did see white egrets and ibis, pink spoonbills, some herons and pelicans and an osprey in a treetop eating a fish. Plus others that I haven't a clue what they are. The seagulls here are different than the ones on the west coast. They have one that's black & white called a "laughing gull" that really does sound like someone laughing! And it's just as obnoxious as any other gull.

We had lunch at an oak motte overlooking San Antonio Bay. (Yes, I had to look it up: motte is a southwestern term for a grove or clump of trees in open country.)

About 250 of the Whooping Cranes remaining in the world winter at the refuge. Most of them are out on some islands nearby and you get the best views if you go on a boat tour (pricy), but the ranger told us that sometimes you can see them from the observatory tower at the refuge. We climbed the long ramp up to the tower and way, way down on the shallow waters of the bay, we saw some. There's a big telescope at the observatory (free for a change!) so we watched them move around for a while. Apparently within a few weeks, they'll head north to their breeding grounds in Canada, so we were lucky to be here right now.  Pity one of us doesn't have a telephoto lens.  (There are whooping cranes in this picture--you may have to squint to see them!)

We finally saw a couple of alligators—a big one and a smaller one—on the shore of Hog Lake, just as we were starting the auto loop tour through the marshes and savannah. That's where we saw the osprey too, eating a fish that was still flopping around.

3/9/11 - USS Lexington NHS

“Lady Lex” was a WWII aircraft carrier.  Actually there were 2:  the first one, CV-2, was sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the 2^nd one, CV-16, (the one we toured) was commissioned in 1943 with the same name.  I don’t quite get that, but I guess they do that a lot with ships.

“The Blue Ghost” (they often give ships nicknames—I do get that!) is now a museum, moored in Corpus Christi, TX.  There are 5 self-guided tour routes that take you to the flight deck, the bridge and the decks below.  You can probably figure out that George was more interested in the ship than I was, although it was pretty cool. 

We started out with a stop at the MEGA Theater for a 45-minute movie.  I expected it to be about the ship, or at least WWII—it was a National Geographic video of Lewis & Clark’s expedition.  I suppose you could at least call it nautical…

Then we headed 3 sets of steep narrow stair steps to the Flight Deck.  They had all sorts of planes that had actually flown from that ship while she was on active duty.  Except for one that had wings that folded up, they all looked like baby planes to me, and much smaller than the planes I’ve seen in old movies.  In fact, the whole deck didn’t look long enough to land a plane on!  We got to go up into the bridge, check out the anti-aircraft guns and wander around pretty much wherever we wanted. 

Then we went on the Foc’sle Tour, the Gallery Deck, Lower Decks & Hangar Deck.  We went up those steep ship stairs that are almost like ladders, then we went down them.  We went through all sorts of passageways, following signs that read “Tour Route”, which was all that kept me from being totally lost.  We saw the Offices Quarters, Dental Clinic, Crew’s Galley, Ready Rooms, etc., etc., plus a lot of exhibits that were dedicated to other ships or battles like Pearl Harbor.  There was a whole lot to see—you couldn’t possibly assimilate everything on one trip.  There were some volunteers that were pretty interesting to talk to.  As usual, there are places where George has to duck--or he gets another bump on his head!

 After almost 4 hours, we decided we’d seen all of it, and headed outside to find something to eat.  We found a little place just down the pier.  George had a cheeseburger (boring…) and I had a shrimp Po’ Boy (yum!).  Then I saw a sign that Happy Hour started at 4:00, so we each had a couple of 99 cent Margaritas (double yum!!)