We've spent two full days here, just getting a feel of what it will be like to live here this winter. In the past when we've vacationed here, we loved it...but it always felt like a vacation spot. Now we're not so concerned about eating out, shopping, and other tourist things. We're looking more at how we'd like to live...opportunities for exercise, activity, volunteering, etc. We've taken lovely walks on the beach and scenic drives. We've spent time arranging for the details of living: signing rental agreements, deciding where to store our travel trailer (Lucy), finding great places to buy seafood, looking over pool/fitness center options, planning for mail delivery..all that good stuff!
Much of that doesn't lend itself to photos, so I mostly have lots of pictures on the beach. To me that's the most interesting thing, anyway. That is certainly Rockport's appeal to us!
We joined the community beach club during a previous visit about 6 months ago. For a whopping $15 a year, we have access to beautiful groomed beaches along Aransas Bay. This is what early morning looks like when not too many people have made footprints to mar all the groomers' hard work:
I love it that the seagulls like to lounge in the shade of the palapas just as much as we do!
There are several piers along this stretch of beach, and it's so fun to walk out to the ends of them. We'll be able to fish along them, too (once we buy some fishing tackle and bait).
Many of the shore birds are used to people walking by, so they don't scare off too easily as you approach. This great egret let me get quite a few shots of him. And then when I passed him and walked down the beach, he later flew to catch up with me and hung out a little more. I don't know if he was just curious, or feeling companionable, but it was really fun for me to have him follow me!
Later Curt pointed out a great blue heron enjoying the shade of one of the palapas. I approached him from behind a palm tree. He let me get pretty close, but then he started showing signs of nervousness...changing position, bending over, stretching his wings...it kind of looked like he was doing heron yoga! I backed off before he felt the need to fly away. I didn't have the heart to shoo him away from his comfortable shady spot.
We checked our favorite spot for watching dolphins, but didn't see any today or yesterday. Someday I'll be able to show them to you.
One thing that isn't so attractive on the Rockport beach is the arrival of the jellyfish. There aren't many now, but sometimes the beaches are strewn with thousands of them. Ah, well, every silver lining has a cloud! (Or something like that...)
Here are a few more miscellaneous scenes from the Rockport beach:
The lovely little swimming area on Luttle Bay:
Piles and piles of oyster shells (and I love the little outcropping of wildflowers on top of this one):
These shells are crushed and mixed with cement for some of the local construction...especially the long breakwaters which protect the shore.
The graceful curve of the shoreline:
And the enormous blue crab sculpture on the beach:
Here's Mom's Bait Shop, which we were assured is the best place to buy bait...though I can't figure out how the fish can tell which bait shop their meal comes from.
We're camped on Goose Island, which is across the Copano Bay from Rockport-Fulton. There are way fewer people here, and virtually no commercial development. We've driven to where we can look across toward the Aransas Wildlife Refuge where the whooping cranes winter. However, we haven't seen any more since the spectacular flyover sighting a few nights ago in Brazos Bend State Park. In the photo below, the finger of land way off in the distance is the wildlife refuge. Pretty soon there will be lots of whooping cranes there.
Also on Goose Island is this magnificent live oak tree. It's the Texas Champion Tree, and it's over 1000 years old. If you have a way to enlarge the photo I took of the interpretive sign, it's some very interesting reading.
I've hit some kind of technical glitch. Just below the next photo, somehow I must have touched something that makes my lettering red. I can't figure out how to undo it. It happened once before, months ago. Since the blog background is red, the red print is unreadable. So I'll stop writing right here and hope that when I send this one and start a new post next time, the red letters,will be gone.
We're heading to Kerrcille tomorrow!
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