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Life on the beach

 A good night’s work.  Our park is almost completely back to grass. It’s not that the park owners didn’t want to get the water out, it’s just that all they had were two 2 inch pumps.  They were doing the best they could with what they had.  With all this flooding there weren’t any other pumps available in the Valley.  Tommy brought his oilfield equipment down from Oklahoma just to help out a difficult situation. Whatever, time for a short trip.  We loaded up the bus and headed north to Mustang Island outside Corpus. Love these South Texas rest stops along the way.  Love the brick work.  Chatterjack shrimp at Snoopy’s Pier for dinner.   Our beach parking/camping spot on Mustang Island. We’re going to stay here a few days. 
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Progress

 Help arrived last night.  One of the residents has oilfield equipment north of here.  He brought a bigger pump down to get the standing water out of the park. The water has been threatening to invade homes, but so far as we know, no-one’s interior floors have gotten wet.  There is more to it than that though, this park is not on city sewer.  We’re all individually on septic.  Some lower-lying septic systems are completely underwater.  At some point the effluent is going to migrate the wrong direction and this is going to evolve into a health problem.  Tommy not only brought the big pump, he’s manning it.  We understand he got in about midnight last night and fired it up.  He’s staying up with it all night tonight to get this place dried out.  The right guy with the right equipment. It looked better out there this morning. No significant rain today.  By this evening it looks a *lot* better.Significantly more grass showing than we’ve seen since this all started.  Some of the streets are still underwater, but it’s receding from driveways and doorways.  We’re excited to see how it looks tomorrow. 
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Huge storm last night

 This morning, the Lake Sandpipers level is up.  Higher than yesterday.  All the houses are still dry, but some are surrounded entirely by water now.   There is severe afternoon  and evening weather forecast for the entire week.  We need a bigger pump. On the brighter side, we’re getting shorebirds we’ve never seen in the park before; lesser yellowlegs, several black-necked stilts, and a black-bellied whistling duck flyby. 
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Sunday morning

 Same lake. A last visit for the season with Barb and Henry (and Willow and Bailey); they left for Canada this morning. Jay and Karen, the park owners, got a couple two inch pumps going and pumped water out of the park all day long. Took a drive and a walk. Found a cloud of hawks (and a turkey vulture), kettled-up, working their way north.  Alex went to the Gymnastics Regionals at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs today.  Four states participating.  He scored 5th all-around.  Great job Alex! Retired to the swimming pool about 6.  When you’re birding without optics, it’s called bare-naked birding.  Bare-naked, no binoculars, no camera, we got a flyover of Mississippi Kites settling down for the night. It looks like the lake level has fallen several inches by dark.