Road Trip to Padre Island National Seashore

We've taken a couple of neat road trips in the past week. Tonight I'll tell you about the first...then perhaps tomorrow I can blog about the other one.

Curt had visited Padre Island National Seashore 42 years ago, before we met. He's often reminisced about it, so we decided to go visit again, since I'd never been there. From Rockport we have to go through Corpus Christi, so we ran a few errands while we were in the "big city." Actually, CC is known as the "Sparkling City."

From there you take a bridge over to North Padre Island. And you drive through a lot of flat land and scrub, and finally, out in the middle of nowhere, you find the Park. 

 

 

Side note: I  don't know if all of you are aware of the Senior pass for National Parks, but if you aren't, be sure to pick one up at the entrance of any National Park, National Monument, National Historic Site, National Wildlife Refuge, etc. it costs all of $10 (though you do have to be at least 62) and it lasts for life (as long as you don't lose it, like we did our first one). It gets you and everyone in your vehicle into the Park for free, and it works for any Federal Fee area. One of the greatest deals in traveling!!

Padre Island is one of the largest unspoiled, undeveloped stretches of seashore in the U.S. It's absolutely beautiful!

In some places you can drive right up onto the beach, and then drive along it for miles. Naturally, there are some parts of the National Park where you can't do that,

There's quite a nice Visitor Center with some very interesting and informative displays...everything from history to ecology, to flora and fauna. 

This is a model of the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle, above, which is endangered and is making a comeback at the National Seashore. Below is a display showing a clutch of the eggs, and the baby turtles working their way up to the surface.

And we found this display to be VERY interesting. Forgive the glare...it was outdoors, and the plexiglass picked up lots of reflections. But if you can enlarge the photo a bit on your computer or tablet, you can see how long it takes for some of the common everyday plastic items we use to disintegrate, or biodegrade. This was a real eye opener for us, and we're going to make an extra effort to remember our reusable grocery bags...since the single use ones take 20 years to biodegrade if they're not recycled. Here was the real shocker: it said that disposable diapers last 450 years!!! That may very well be true, but I'm wondering how they know that? They haven't been around for nearly that long!

Back out on the beach, we enjoyed the solitude of being the only ones there with just the birds for company, on such a blustery day. Here are some Royal Terns...

 

And a couple different varieties of gulls:

   

It was mesmerizing to watch the waves rolling in. I could do that for hours!

Then we drove for miles along the beach until we made it to Mustang Island and Port Aransas:

Saw a couple of cold & hungry looking feathered friends along the way:

And one man was flying all these kites: 

Once at Port Aransas, the only way to get to Rockport is by ferry. It's a free ferry and there are several that run constantly during the day and less frequently at night. A very short ride...less than 10 minutes. But it sure is handy to have the ferry to bridge the gap!

We JUST missed the first ferry, so we were first in line for the next one. That gave us a great view!

Almost there!

Crossing the Intracoastal Waterway, which runs the whole length of the eastern U.S, from New Your, around the peninsula of Florida, and ends up at Brownsville, Texas...and even goes right by our little cottage at Fulton Beach.

  

And then back home again. What a great way to spend a cold and windy winter day!

Late for Yoga Class!

Just a quick post... Last night I left work in time to get to my yoga/stretching class at the gym, which is on my way home. I was stopped dead in my tracks, however, by the evening light on the Bay. Couldn't help myself; I had to pull over and snap a few photos. I don't know when I've seen the bay so glassy and reflective, since we almost always have breezes that ruffle the surface of the water. Here are the sights I enjoyed:

Key Allegro. George Strait's house is in there somewhere. Sometime soon I'll get you some photos of that:

I love how the water picks up the reflection of the sky:

There was a whole raft of canvasback ducks. These are the first I've seen this year:

And my good fisherman friend, enjoying the late evening hours in solitude, with only his reflection for company:

Once back home, after dinner we took down the Christmas tree. The City of Fulton has removed the Christmas lights and decorations that we had in our view (so sad...we'd come to really enjoy all the festive lights we used to have!):

Now you just see black silhouettes of Palm trees when you look out at night. 

So we took the cue and removed our tree, named Feliciano, from the corner that he so beautifully lit up for the past month. A few years ago we discovered that we can leave his lights and ornaments on, and squeeze his branches upward and wrap him up tight with cling wrap. Then he's a snap to put in place next year!

Before:

During:

And after. One last embrace for our wintertime friend before he goes into storage. Adios, Feliciano, see you next year!

Now Christmas is officially over at the Shirer beach cottage. But our gratitude for Christ's gift to us will last all year!

Happy New Year!

Hello, friends around the world! Did you think I had evaporated? Really, two separate times I had a blog post almost entirely written, and then an interruption came and I unthinkingly closed the magnetic cover on my iPad. With that almost-inaudible click, POOF! All my words and pictures disappeared! Talk about discouraging! So today I'm playing it smart. I took the cover off my iPad and put it across the room. If I get interrupted I won't accidentally erase my labors by automatically clicking it shut. Maybe today you'll actually get to hear from me!

It's a cool, cloudy day, but I'm as cozy as can be. In the sunroom, overlooking the bay, snuggled up in my favorite blanket. What a way to spend the morning!

Here's the view I get to enjoy with just a slight turn of my head:

Not trying to make you jealous, I'm just setting the scene....

First order of business: HAPPY NEW YEAR! I've written that to you several times now, but THIS time you're actually going to get to read it and receive our sincerest wishes for a New Year filled with joy and peace.

Curt felt I should give a recap of the blog this past year. I won't go through all our adventures again...you can read about those in detail if you want to scroll back through the previous posts. But I will say that between June 10 when we set off from Kerrville, Texas and November 10 when we moved into our rented beach cottage in Rockport-Fulton, Texas, we covered over 11,000 miles in 5 months. We visited family and old friends along the way, made some wonderful new friends, found some new favorite places, saw some breathtaking scenery all up and down the Eastern part of the U.S. and Maritime Provinces of Canada. We loved every bit of our trip, and we want to do it again. But first, this coming summer, we plan to take a similar trip up the western side of the U.S. and Canada.

We started out in our pop-up tent camper...

...and returned to Texas in Lucy, our new 23' travel trailer.

I had a wonderful time most evenings (and often very late into the night or wee morning hours!) chronicling our adventures on the blog. And I want to thank all you faithful readers for visiting it, and recommending it to your friends. I'm thrilled with all the visitors and "regulars" who have come to read about our travels. Just a few stats about the blog itself:

We've had almost 6300 visits from more than countries 22 countries....the ones listed below, plus a few others I can remember: Bulgaria, Japan, Estonia, United Kingdom, Spain, and more.

And many friends have come back again and again. I've visited via email with old friends as they've commented on various blog posts (I think it's still a difficult process to actually place a comment on the blog and I apologize for that...but I'm not tech savvy enough to figure out how to make it easier!). And I've made some new email friends as a result of the blog...someone has shared the address with them, thinking they might be interested in one post or another. I've visited with quilters, knitters, musicians, painters, and travel enthusiasts whom I've never met, and have enjoyed every contact and conversation. Thank you all so much for your support! Without the encouragement of knowing that someone was actually reading the blog, I'm sure I would have quit long ago, as each post takes 2-3 hours to do!

But now, to begin catching you up on the past month, as I haven't been overly diligent with the blog. I'll start with a little bit of backtracking here and will continue in future posts as I get more photos...because lots of writing without something to look at makes for a dull blog!

Here's a view from our yard looking our toward Lamar, a peninsula to the north of Fulton. It's where Goose Island State Park is found, the campground where we stayed for a few impatient days in early November while we waited to be able to move into our cottage. I caught this photo one evening as the setting sun glinted off the windows of a Catholic Convent there. A few days later we headed over to Lamar to see the Convent, and we spent a lovely hour strolling around the peaceful grounds.

The chapel...outside and inside.

We attended a Naturalist-led bird walk/watch at Goose Island State Park. It was a cloudy, drizzly morning, but that made for some beautiful skies and some great birdwatching!

Most of the birds were not close enough to see without binoculars...hence, the photos of the birders rather than the birds!!

Afterward, Curt and I drove around the peninsula, and we did find a pair of whooping cranes with one immature young (the one in the middle). Again, the distance was great, but because the cranes are so endangered, we'd rather give you a less-than-optimal photo than approach too closely and risk scaring the cranes from their comfortable spot.

Speaking of birds, another day Curt handed me the bag of bread crumbs and announced that today I would be the ones to feed the seagulls. Hmmmm...I'm more comfortable with taking the photos of that particular activity than actually participating in it. But I was game to try. 

What may appear at first glance to be a smile was actually a grimace. Just as I had thought, being surrounded by dozens (felt like hundreds!) of flapping, screaming birds was not my idea of fun!

So I handed the bag back to Curt, and he embraced them fully! To each his own!

I have mentioned that I joined the choir at the First United Methodist Church in Rockport. Our choir director, Ouida Richardson, had us all over to her house for an Epiphany Party. In the invitation, she mentioned that she would serve Kings Bread. Not being from south Texas, I'd never heard of that, so I was interested to see what she meant. I was in for a treat to experience a long-standing tradition. For those of you who, like me, are in the dark, I'll enlighten you.

Kings Bread, or Rosca de Reyes, is a bread that is baked especially to commemorate the journey of the Wise Men to find the Infant Jesus. It is baked fresh daily in bakeries all over Mexico and south Texas, and it sells out almost the moment it is packaged in the specially decorated boxes. Ouida had to beg on the phone in order to get the bakery to hold back a loaf for her until she could pick it up an hour later!

Here's the loaf, or ring, uncovered. We put a choir member's hand in the photo so you can see how big it actually is. Definitely wouldn't fit in your average home oven!

I'm sure there's some significance to the colors and placement of the mounds and stripes of frosting, but I don't know what they signify. However, there is a tiny plastic "Baby Jesus" baked somewhere inside the loaf, to signify the flight of the Holy Family to escape Herod's massacre of all infant children under the age of two. Tradition says that whoever gets the Baby in their piece of bread is responsible to host and provide the tamales for a party in February.

Ouida brought out a wonderful collection of keepsakes given to her by a dear friend, as she told the story of the Magi. In this beautiful box...

...were a scroll telling the story...

And velvet pouches of gold, frankincense and myrrh:

Then the excitement began, to see who would get the Baby in their piece of bread. Ouida told us that we could choose our piece from anywhere on the ring we wanted...no need for adjacent slices. So everyone started sizing up the loaf and figuring whether we'd take a piece with or without icing, and where on the loaf we'd make our cuts. Who would be hosting next month's tamale party??

The suspense ended quickly when Dennis, Ouida's husband, cut the first slice for himself, and the Baby fell right into his hand! We all laughed to think that they have to go through all the preparations for a party again so soon! Curt and I are thinking, however, that we might spare them the trouble. We've been wanting to open our home to a group, and perhaps we can take that responsibility from the Richardsons!

Curt always finds someone to talk with...especially over a pot of delicious meatballs!

Toward the end of the evening, their son Stephen, who is a music major at Texas State University in San Marcos, treated us to some beautiful piano music. 

What a lovely evening spent with new friends!

That's enough for now. Have to get ready to go to work. Oh, you didn't know that I'm a working girl again? Well, you'll just have to check back in a few days to find out more about that, and the other things we've been doing. See you soon!