Goose Island - We've been there before and we'll come back again!

On our last night at Mustang Island State Park, the cold front blew in and the temperatures plummeted. We were glad that we had taken all our beach walks in the previous three days, because it was a chilly 40 degrees when we woke up for our travel day. It was a tough driving day, with constant winds around 30 mph, and gusts over 40. We're glad that it's a relatively short drive to our next destination. But this travel day we have a new experience planned. For the first time, we'll be taking the motor home on a ferry. We got in line as we watched a ferry boat just pulling out from the dock to our right.

With our 35-foot motor home and tow car, we took up a large part of our ferry boat. The stiff winds meant that the ferry captain had to make the water crossing at an angle. It took some fancy driving to bring us into our docking station. This short ferry ride is good practice for us, as we'll be doing much more of these water crossings on a grander scale in our summer travels.

It was a windy hour-long drive to our destination at Goose Island State Park. We've been here before, and we enjoy this place. We made reservations at this popular park, and were given a site just barely long enough for the motor home. Mark had to do some fancy backing maneuvers to miss that limb that was lower than our roof. We obviously won't be putting out the slides for this stop because we are penned in by live oak trees on all sides.

It didn't take long to get the motor home attached to electricity, and we were out on the trail.

Just like the town of Port Aransas, Goose Island was slammed by a hurricane in 2017. The trees still show the signs of the hurricane damage. All the bay-side camping spots were destroyed in the hurricane. Construction is underway, and they hope to have those coveted water-side camp sites open by Fall 2020.

Denisa went to early-morning bird walks both days we were camping at this state park. One met at the "Big Tree" about a mile away. This old live oak is thought to be one of the oldest and biggest trees of its kind. If you look very carefully, you can see Mark looking very small on the left side of the picture behind the fence.

It's thought to be around a thousand years old, but the hurricane of 2017 was hard on it. A view of the back side shows that major limbs have been removed.

A closer look also reveals that more cables are being used to support the interior branch structure of this old tree.

Surprisingly, Denisa took very few pictures on the bird walks. The birding hosts have been doing this for 18 winters, and they just need a distant glance to verify the names of the 51 birds that we saw the first morning. There were some hard-core birders on the walks, and Denisa's very soft-core knowledge left her struggling to just get a binocular on the birds. No time for cameras.

The main bird that brings us to this state park is the endangered whooping crane. These majestic birds have a wing span of 7.5 feet. At five feet tall, they are the largest birds in North America, and are easy to spot even for beginner birders like us.

At one time only 16 whooping cranes were left in the world. But now the numbers are up over 500. Most of these birds spend their winters in the marshes in this section of south Texas. During our walk, we spotted 12 different whooping cranes. These two kept their heads down, concentrating on eating.

The following picture was taken at a distance and into the sun light. But when you can get five of the rarest birds in the world in one shot you don't care. The good news is that these whoopers seem to be very happy eating their preferred diet of blue crabs found in the shallow water here. Some winters they have had to survive on the corn left from residents that have adopted this flock, and have been instrumental in their survival.

These mating pairs will spend their summers in northern Canada, where it is hoped they will raise a single baby to bring back to south Texas for the winter. This fall, however, no young ones had survived to make the trip south. This breed is still very endangered, so it's always a thrill to see them. 

Of course we are easily entertained, and we've been known to spend hours watching something like this grove of trees.

We have driven to the nearby town of Rockport, where a nice parking area gave us great views of the heron rookery here. With binoculars we can see that the upper branches are filled with great blue herons looking for love.

At first we thought they were fighting, then we realized that we were witnessing the courting dances between pairs. Spring is in the air!

We watched the dating that also led to (ahem) mating.

Close examination of the tree tops found large nests scattered throughout. We also watched the sweet process of a male bird flying in with big twigs. Each time he handed them over to the female, who wove them into the future home of their offspring. Yeah, we can watch this stuff for hours!

While staring at tree tops, we looked for another famous one in this little town. The stiff ocean winds blew a windmill top off its tower and into one of the local live oak trees many years ago. Now in a residential area, this old tree has grown around the windmill blades, and it is a permanent part of the tree.

Our last stop in Rockport was a beautiful one that had been recommended by the birding hosts. The wildflowers are blooming!

It's an unusual location, but we were hanging out at the Rockport cemetery for this beautiful display. 

Again we see that spring is in the air bringing us our first and best look at the wildflowers that we love.

For the last picture of the day, we found another field with pink flowers that matched Denisa's blouse. We enjoyed our two-night stay at Goose Island, and we got to use our Texas state park pass again. New this year, we get unlimited half-price rate for the second night of a camping stay. We're taking advantage of that change! It's been a good stop at Goose Island State Park, a place we've been before and will come back to again.