Road Tripping to Corpus Christi

Mark has been doing a lot of chaffeuring during our stay in South Texas. Denisa's Mother, Betty, is finding that fewer and fewer of her friends are driving--especially after dark and on the expressway--as they are getting close to their 90th birthdays. So Mark has been driving to evening concerts, and shopping, and eating excursions that are further away. Before we left her park in Mission, Texas, Betty was interested in an overnight road trip. She wanted to go to Corpus Christi, so we headed north for the three-hour trip.

This is where Denisa's family came for spring break trips to the beach when she was a child. We arrived at North Padre Island, and went straight to the National Seashore visitor center. The beach was basically deserted on this cloudy morning.

Aside from the group of junior ROTC students from an area school doing beach clean-up, we had the North Padre National Seashore to ourselves. 

Of course, there were a few locals at the beach. That would include this cormorant, scouring the shallow water for breakfast.

A less welcome local resident is this man-of-war jellyfish. Even though the beautiful color is interesting, we knew to stand clear of those long blue tentacles, that punch a powerful sting.

A large flock of pelicans flew overhead on this protected portion of Padre Island.

We were surprised to see that we could drive the car on the beach even on the national seashore portion of the island. It was odd to see a speed limit sign on the beach. Denisa and Mark enjoy walking for miles on a sandy beach, but Betty does not. She thought the "beach-combing" from the car was the best beach experience ever.

This line of posts separate the public beach from the protected national seashore.

We visited the displays at the visitor center, especially interested with the efforts to protect the sea turtles that come to shore here to lay eggs. Betty volunteered for this picture at the visitor center. We're not sure if we've seen a park ranger with bright pink nail polish before.

We continued north over the bridge and onto Mustang Island, until we arrived in Port Aransas. This area was hit hard by Hurricane Harvey, and we were interested to see its recovery. That storm came ashore on August 25, 2017, and there are still homes that look like it was just last week.

We saw that some buildings had messages spray-painted on them. We read, "Hazardous Chemicals--Keep Out" and "Harvey Won't Stop Us" amid the broken glass and missing roofs.

Even though there were lots of brand new roofs, many buildings still had blue tarps stretched over them with more messages. There was a menacing "Keep Out" right beside, "We will Heal."

The economic impact of the storm lives on, as we saw many businesses destroyed and still closed six months later. This large souvenir shop has been completely gutted, but it looks like it will return. We tried to help the economic recovery, as we ate a delicious sea food lunch before we left the island.

With all the destruction we see in-land, it's nice to see that the beaches look good. Here in Port Aransas, RVs can camp right on the beach if they have the proper permit.

The only way to continue north is on the car ferry that connects Port Aransas with the town of Aransas Pass.

The wait for the ferry can be long during peak season, but it was less than ten minutes for us this day. We were on the water for the short ride, with a front row seat of one of the drilling rigs that dot the shore.

We could also get a wide-angle view of Port Aransas, that looks healthy and untouched from this distance.

It's a five-minute ferry ride to the other side, where the sea-gull welcoming committee brought us back to the mainland and the town of Aransas Pass. 

With less tourism, we have to say that this tiny town looks sadder than the port. It looks like many businesses here will never return. We continued north to Rockport, Texas, where entire blocks were bulldozed after the destruction of Hurricane Harvey decimated the buildings. Even with the destruction, some of the most celebrated visitors continue to return to this area. We drove Betty to see these visitors.

The picture above looks like a tranquil pasture, with a few cattle grazing close to the pond. But look closer at those white dots in the background.

Those are the famous whooping cranes that continue to come back to their winter home here in South Texas. To give some scale to the these massive birds, there are a few coots in the picture as well. The average whooper grows to be more than five-feet tall, but some are seven-feet.

They are joined by some more common brown sand hill cranes. But it's the solid white birds that are the rare and endangered whoopers that we have come to see. In the 1940's, only 21 birds were living in the wild. That makes it one of the rarest, as well as the largest bird in North America. We are not alone in seeing this spectacle, as there is a line of cars on this country road. All the others have binoculars and long telephoto lenses to get a better view of this rare sight.

The whooping cranes aren't actually solid white. They have red on their heads, and when they start flapping, we see the black feathers  on the tips of those eight-foot wings. We are happy to report that this is a record-breaking year, with 431 cranes migrating to Texas. Another record was broken with 63 new chicks that made their first 2,500 mile journey from Canada to Texas this year.

It felt like we were on a pristine country road. But right beside the road was another pile of hurricane debris, still waiting to be cleaned up.

After that rare viewing of endangered birds, we travel just a mile to another rare sight. This is the Texas Champion Live Oak tree. Locals call it simply, "The Giant Tree." It is 11 feet across the trunk and 89 feet across the crown.

At over 1,000 years old, this giant has seen a lot of history unfold in front of it. But like many other senior citizens, it needs a little crutch to keep some of its limbs upright.

We've seen a lot on this road trip day, but we have one more stop. We found out that the local Oyster Festival is this weekend in nearby Fulton, Texas. We stood in a line two blocks long to get into the festival grounds. Locals that knew it would be shoulder-to-shoulder crowded on Saturday, have opted for the less-busy Friday evening festivities. It certainly didn't look like a small crowd to us in the massive tents that were set up along the coast.

Of course the star of the show are the oysters. We'll miss the Saturday events like the parade, and the oyster shucking and eating contests. But we can still experience some oyster eating on Friday night. The local firemen are manning the very popular booth serving all things fried--oyster, shrimp, and potatoes. Mark has made his way to the front of the line to purchase a sampler for the three of us to share.

We have to say that these friend oysters were tastier than the ones we tried on the west coast last summer.

Real oyster-lovers were standing in line at the fresh oyster stand. Here the shuckers were opening the shells to these "tasty" nuggets.

People were carrying these out by the dozens. A little too slimy for our taste, we didn't have the courage to taste them.

There was a local television station filming a segment about the festival right in front of the fresh oyster stand.

Mark was photo-bombing the telecast, hoping to make it on the local news as an interested oyster-eater. 

In addition to eating, we enjoyed the live music and walked through the arts and crafts. It was another fun festival to add to our long list of local favorites! Whew! This has been a full day and we've already had a good road trip. But we spent the night in Corpus Christi, as we have more things to see here!