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Goose Island

Admiring the view. Smooth gray water, the Rockport/Fulton Peninsula a couple miles away across the bay. Aransas Bay. It is perfectly calm. Sixty degrees. Six posts in the water fifty feet out, occupied by five pelicans and one cormorant. One cormorant, pretending he’s a pelican. But then one of the pelicans is poised, wings out, drying them, pretending he’s a cormorant. Low clouds. The Copano Bay Bridge off in the mist to the right. Three Savannah Sparrows working the grass for seeds, between us and the water. One laughing gull, wearing his transitional plumage between winter and summer, black head almost complete, on a post next to the water in front of us. The tide is in. A Willet wanders by in the oyster-bed shallows. Three Goldeneyes drift into view, one fishing, two snoozing. Somehow they stay together. A flock of peeps zooms past from right to left. Complaining. The pelicans shuffle. A few more fly in and land. A few fly off. Now there are three Pelicans, one Cormorant and two Royal Terns. I can barely hear the water lapping against the seawall. I can smell the sea grass. The rain starts again. Lightly. This is the big storm day. They’ve been watching this one come for a week now. I set the alarm for seven. I still had a chance to take a birding walk, if the weather was good, and see the sparrow and wren. Can’t pass that up. I was saved by the rain. Just as I stood up, the wind and rain hit. Finally. I went back to bed. Later, I got up to admire the view. The storm only lasted two hours. It moved on. Went back inside. I checked the propane. It’s half full. Judy did some chores. Vacuumed the armadillo. Watched the Australian Open. Judy found a house for sale in the paper for $35,000. It’s only one bedroom and one bath, but a house for $35,000? That’s pretty reasonable. Checked the propane. It’s still half full. Decided to try to something new with the motorhome. Instead of driving it out to dump it every few days when we stay at state parks, you carry some gray water away from it periodically. We bought a portable gray water tank with wheels. You leave the motorhome where it is, drop some gray water into the portable tank, drag the portable tank over to the dump station with the car, and dump it. It worked. It was a little heavy, lifting the tank with twenty gallons of water in it. Let’s see, twenty gallons, eight pounds per gallon. Yeah. It’s heavy. You only have to lift one end, so it’s not so bad. It tilts to dump. I think after we do it a few more times, we’ll get the rhythm of it. Talked with our neighbor on the left. He paddles his kayak all over, fishing the bays. It’s a pretty good setup. He has a couple rod holders on it, a clip to hold his paddle while he’s managing a fish, an combination tackle box, ice chest on the back to hold the gear and the catch, and electronics on board to tell him water temperature, depth, and when he’s over fish. He doesn’t need the depth finder or fish finder here. You can just look down into the water and see how deep you are and whether there are fish or not.

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Wharf cat

Put on your long sleeves and long pants. We’re going out on the boat. The Wharf Cat. The Whooping Crane tour. It leaves from the Rockport Harbor. We can stay inside where it’s warm and look out the glass if we want, but we never want. We end up out on the deck in the wind, watching the birds, and enjoying the ride. We enjoyed the ride. The boat cruises north up the intra-coastal waterway, which passes right through the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, the winter home of the whooping crane. The summer home of the whooping crane wasn’t even known until the 1950s. It’s way up in the Arctic Circle, in a Canadian National Park, which had already been set aside for the preservation of the Wood Buffalo. Wood Buffalo National Park. In their winter home, they split up into family groups, two adults and one chick. The chick is big, it has already migrated thousands of miles to get from the arctic breeding grounds to its winter home, but it still wears the brownish juvenile coat. Family groups always consist of either two adults, or two adults and a chick. They lay two eggs, but only raise one chick. They start incubation as soon as the first egg is laid, so the first chick gets a big head start on the second one. The second egg is just a back-up. They never raise more than one chick. Except this year. This year there is a set of twins. Only the third time ever, that twins have been recorded. We didn’t see them from the boat, but Dovie’s daughter is a wildlife photographer. Dovie gave us one of her daughter’s pictures of them. The entire whooping crane population was down to a count of twelve, they say. They were within just a year or two of total extinction. Now there are several hundred. I thought there was a critical mass for species, below which there was not enough variety in the gene pool to support a healthy population, or a comeback from the brink of extinction. I have heard that discussed in regard to the endangered Florida Panther that inhabits the disappearing swampland there. I guess that rule doesn’t apply to whooping cranes. A healthy population of hundreds inhabits the planet now. Reestablishing a breeding population was only part of the battle. They are still vulnerable. One hurricane could wipe out the entire flock. That’s what happened to the Louisiana flock. But once a bird is conditioned to migrate to one location that’s it. You can’t just tell them to go somewhere else. Researchers have been making good use of that extra egg. The backup. After several well-intentioned, failed efforts, there are now three flocks of these cranes in the world. Winter homes in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. We saw several family groups. We got a twenty-minute look at a family not fifty yards away. They’re not spooked by the boat at all. As long as we all stay on the boat, it can pull right up on the bank next to them. Enough about cranes. Enough about birds. We’ve done it. We’re completely birded out. No more birds. Chatted with a guy on the boat. He has a hobby, in addition to birding. He commented that this vacation was unusual for him. He usually drives a lot more. What is his usual vacation? Visiting every county in the United States! I mean to visit every state. I never thought to aspire to visiting every county. He says he’s about 40% of the way there. It’s getting more difficult though, because he has to drive over 800 miles just to pick up a new one. When he found out where we were from in Colorado, he said: “Aah. Boulder county. Nice place.” Talked to another guy. He just moved here. He used to live on the Florida Panhandle, Fort Walton Beach, but he made a mistake. His job moved to Virginia four years ago. He went with it. When he tried to move back, he couldn’t buy his house. Now it costs twice as much as when he left. He moved to the Texas Coast instead. It’s more affordable here. Still had to go look at the ducks. We’re through birding, but we couldn’t let Fulvous Ducks pass. Drove back to the pond where we saw them yesterday. They weren’t there. Looked all over. No whistling ducks anywhere. We gave up and drove back to the park. Stopped at the gas station to look at something, and there were whistling ducks, in the air, swirling all around us. We watched them land in the bay. We drove around and found a vantage. Two hundred black bellied whistling ducks. We looked at all of them. No Fulvous Whistling Ducks. This was a different flock. Just before dark I went back out to look at the ducks again. The flock of two hundred whistlers was still there. Still no Fulvous. Drove the back roads looking at ponds. Found the flock from the day before. Examined every duck there. Mostly whistlers, but there was a Mallard. There was a Mrs. Mallard. And there. A duck that looked different from the back. His back was black. Fulvous ducks have a black back. It was the longest time before he would turn around for me to see his bill. A bright orange bill and it’s a black-bellied whistling duck. A gray bill, and it’s a Fulvous whistling duck. That’s it! Gray! Another new bird. I never expected the see this one here. That’s enough. A break from the birds. Took a walk on the fishing pier here at the campground. It’s an old wooden pier, about a quarter of a mile long. It hooks way out into St Charles Bay. Night herons stand on the rails. Nine o’clock at night, only one other person there. Fishing. We watched him fish for a while, and watched the surface of the water start to boil. There were fish popping the surface all over. We’ve never seen that before. Not in salt water. It was speckled sea trout eating something. It looked like there was a hatch on, but there were no bugs. Guess there can be other kinds of hatches. It could have been minnows. It could have been shrimp. Who knows? But it looked like a hail storm out there. We watched him catch several fish, but none were quite the required fifteen inches, so they all got tossed back. Nice looking trout, though. The Big Tree. It is a thousand years old. Forty feet high and eighty feet wide.
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Goose Island

No birding this morning. It sprinkled, and the master birder called it off. Too wet to bird. What is that? A little sprinkle and we can’t watch the birds? We were signed up for the afternoon boat tour out of Rockport over to the wildlife refuge to see the whooping cranes. They did the morning tour, and called ours off. Too wet. Guess it was a little rougher out on the water. Judy and I wandered around and saw a few. Hung out at the house. Then we drove around and saw a lot. Mostly water birds. Tons of water birds. A whole pack of black-bellied whistling ducks. Don’t see those just anywhere. Big duck. Bright orange bill. Gray head. Reddish brown body. Broad white wing stripe. Black belly. Bright orange legs and feet. Clearly a committee effort. Talked with some neighbors about bird successes. Turned out we covered the same territory today, just at different times. Then they went and ruined our whole day by asking: “Did you see those fulvous whistling ducks mixed in with the black bellied whistling ducks?” Fulvous? We didn’t see any fulvous whistling ducks. We’ve never seen any fulvous whistling ducks. It’s too late to go back tonight. It’s too dark to see them. Now we have to go back to the same place tomorrow, hope the birds are still there, and see if we can find the new duck. At the last park we were in, I noticed hardly anybody ever left. In state parks and KOAs and such, people pull in in the afternoon, then there is an exodus the next morning. Not so at the Gulf Waters RV Park. We’d see one or two people leave each day, but most people were just planted. Then I noticed something else. Usually, there are more motorhomes than any other kind of RV, but here, across from us on the north side of the pond, of the thirteen units we could see, eleven of them were trailers. Nine fifth-wheels and two travel trailers. That leads me to a theory. People that want to go to one place and just park it, tend to buy fifth-wheels over motorhomes. Makes sense. Why pay for two vehicles you can drive, when you can buy a nice truck, then buy a big fifth-wheel that costs a lot less than a motorhome? So, people that want to go everywhere and do everything must prefer motorhomes. People with motorhomes are less focused than fifth-wheelers. People with fifth-wheels do the same thing over and over. Wow! You can tell a lot about people from what they drive. I explained my new insight to Judy. She pointed out that on our side of the pond, there were nine spaces occupied, and seven of them were motorhomes. That didn’t fit my conclusion at all, so I decided the south side data was an anomaly and threw it out. My theory stands unchallenged. Switching the pet dishes didn’t work. Each animal still goes straight for the food intended for the other every time. Guess we’ll have to go back to the name-tag idea. That should take care of it. We have a nice view. Found a specimen oak tree in the forest campground.
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Goose Island State Park

Drove to Goose Island State Park this morning. Driving in here is like coming home. What a warm familiar spot. You can choose between bayside and oak forest sites. The birding is better in the oak forest. More bushes and trees as cover for little forest birds. They even have a feeding station set up there where you can go sit and watch the birds come in to the food and water. We chose bayside. Can’t get enough of the open water. Logged in for five nights. We’ll occupy ourselves with bay views and shorebirds. The boat covers are off again. We put the boat covers on, the wind blows them off. We put them back on. It rains. They keep the rain out. The rain stops, we have to drive the car and stop it fast to dump the cockpit lakes onto the windshield. The wind blows again. The covers blow off. If it ever blows and rains at the same time we’re screwed. My separated shoulder is healing nicely with the enforced racquetball layoff. We didn’t even pack the racquetball gear so we wouldn’t be tempted to find some place to play while we’re out. The Orthopedist said after two weeks of rest, no reinjury, it would be okay. I have rested and iced it to death. It still catches and crunches, but that’s just normal. I’m ready to resume racquetball when we return. I still can’t sleep on my right side, though. I wonder if that means anything. We started making this trip to Texas years ago with the pop-up VW camper. We’ve upgraded vehicles since then with the 20 foot Eldorado, the 27 foot Jamboree, the 35 foot Bounder, and now the 40 foot Bounder. Each upgrade has not changed the character of the trip. They have only made the trip more comfortable each time. Finally, though, this last move to the heavier motorhome changed one thing. For the first time, we didn’t take the house out to park right on the sand for a few days. We talked a lot about it. We could have taken it out. It just never felt quite right to subject it to that. So, finally, a change in motorhomes has made a change in out trip. It’s okay. A good trade. We’ve had so many conversations about the perfect motorhome for brother David. A go-anywhere, do-anything RV. We finally found it out on the beach yesterday. It has everything. Today was a day for travel, setup, and errands. A very leisurely pace. A forty mile day. Tomorrow we may do the unthinkable and set the alarm. If we can drag ourselves out of bed at seven am, we can take a bird walk with a trained professional. If we are going to see birds here we haven’t seen before, that will be our best chance. He says he can spot seaside sparrows and sedge wrens. I’d like to see that!
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Back from the wilderness



We hit the beach at low tide. 9am. Best to get back up the beach and out before high tide at 5pm. We did it. Boy did we do it. 170 miles, round trip, counting the commute from our spot on Mustang Island to the beginning of the beach on Padre Island. 100 miles of four-wheel drive beach. It wasn’t that bad, really: 98% of the drive could have been made by a two-wheel drive sedan. Lots of 40 mph freeway beach driving with just the occasional swerve to dodge flotsam. Is it still flotsam after it hits the beach, or is it only flotsam while it is still floating? I know the difference between flotsam and jetsam. Beach junk, anyway. Old floats, buoys, entire trees, pallets, that sort of stuff. Driving hazards.

The actual four-wheel drive part was really interesting. The longest, toughest stretch was a half-mile of soft sand a foot or so deep. It caused me some concern on the way out. We haven’t been in deep sand with the Jeep before. I hit it pretty hard and stayed pretty fast all the way through. I was feeling more confident with the Jeep’s capabilities on the return trip, went into it slower, and messed around with it a bit. What a great car! Not much directional control through that stuff, it really floats, but every time we started to bog down, I could hit the gas and get right back up on top. Didn’t feel like any real danger at all. We played a lot in the shorter sections of deep sand after that. Well, actually, Judy did. Except for that one long deep section, she drove it all the way back up the island. She had a ball, even through the one section that made her head hurt from the blood pounding through it from the excitement. A good adrenalin rush. She spun donuts. She crashed through the surf. She was awesome. We made it home.

She even found dead blue jellyfish on the beach with their air sacs still inflated, and hit them with the wheels to make them pop. It’s a loud pop. Now the underside of the Jeep is coated with disgusting things. Blue hanging things.

Driving down the beach, we spotted the tracks in the sand, somewhere between the 30 and 35 mile markers on the beach. Thought it was a bicycle track at first, because some of it had washed away, but soon it was clear. These were two parallel tracks. It wasn’t two bicycles. They were too consistent. The gears started turning. What were we looking at? Two wheels. Narrow track. It wasn’t a trailer, because there were no vehicle tracks with it. Not a car trailer. Not a bicycle trailer. We stopped for a look. Footprints! There were footprints between the tracks. Which way was it headed? Down island. Now it was 40 miles down the beach and still going. We needed a story. What makes parallel bicycle tire tracks with footprints in the middle? One of those jogging strollers. That’s it! Who pushes jogging strollers? Not Dad. This is Mom out for a jog. A really long jog. We had been following these tracks for between ten and fifteen miles. The tracks are still headed out. There is only one set of tracks. She hasn’t started back yet.

By this time, there are only two sets of car tire tracks ahead of us for the day. So here is what happened. Mom wanted to take a long run. Dad wanted to fish. He dropped Mom and the kid off for a run, then proceeded on to his favorite fishing spot. Great explanation, huh? Works, doesn’t it?

At mile marker 45, the real explanation presented itself. There was a shelter built up against some beach junk. There was a young guy there. In his early twenties, we’d say. There was a two-wheeled cart with him. He had walked all his stuff down the island with a two-wheel cart as a hiking trailer. Wow! We waved and drove on.

Found the end of the island. Hung out for a couple hours exploring the dunes, having lunch, watching the birds, relaxing in the sun.

On the way back, we stopped and chatted with the hiker. We offered him a gallon of water, but he said he still had four or five gallons left. He thought he was okay. Nice friendly guy. Told him we were from Colorado. Asked him where he was from. He said he grew up in Wyoming but really wasn’t from anywhere. Guess he hasn’t found the place he’s from yet. Drove on.

Back home safe and sound from the big adventure. Tomorrow? Who knows.