Padre and a long bike ride

Note: We're including some blogs from the month of April that were interrupted when we had to make a speedy trip to Oklahoma to help after Denisa's Mother's house burned. So we are catching up with "old blogs" while we are still helping out in Oklahoma.

Even though we have spent the last two months just 84 miles away from South Padre, we never made the trip to the island. Now that we have moved to Harlingen, it's just a 46 mile trip to the beach.

Just like us, the monarchs seem to be passing through as well.

They were enjoying a bright orange flowering bush that was as bright as the butterflies.

This is a fast day-trip at Padre, but we're going to stop in at all of our favorite places. That would include the long board walk next to the convention center that heads toward the bay side of the island.

At the end of the board walk is a nice view of the Laguna Madre Bay on the west side of the island. We also found some of our favorite birds in the bay--a roseate spoonbill and a heron.

The water is shallow on the bay side of the island, and it is a favorite place for kite boarders to catch the breeze for a ride.

That breeze was also causing the local birds to have an interesting hair day.

Another favorite place to stop on South Padre Island is the semi-permanent tent full of sand sculptures. We watched as one of the artists was putting finishing touches on the newest sculpture.

We're not sure who was the model for this sculpture, but it highlights the detail that can be accomplished with sand.

New sculptures are made for the different seasons, and then stand until they are replaced the next year. So we saw everything from the Halloween goblins . . .

to the cookies and milk left out for Santa.

We were glad to see that one of the sand sculptors added a nativity set to the scene from Christmas.

It is illegal to remove sand from the beach, so this sand comes from the Rio Grande River. After a sculpture is completed, it is sprayed with multiple layers of diluted glue to make it last longer.

No trip to Padre Island would be complete without a trip to the east side to walk the ocean beaches.

We were walking with the little water birds, reflected in the water of the Gulf.

We enjoyed nice weather at the beach, and realized we still had enough daylight for two more stops. 

The first stop was at the Padre Island Dairy Queen for a turtle blizzard. We are proud to say that we've never left South Padre without a stop for ice cream! All those calories fueled us for our second stop. Even though we stopped in at Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge last night, we didn't get to take the bicycle ride there.

The 14.2-mile Steve Thompson Wildlife Loop had been recommended to us, and we needed to work off that ice cream. So we unloaded our bikes and started on the old paved road that no longer allows car traffic. We were now on the other side of the Laguna Madre Bay that we saw from Padre Island earlier today. But now that bay is on our east side as we biked half-way around the loop.

As we biked along the bay, Mark caught site of an osprey over the water. That's the tiny dot in the upper right hand corner of the picture below.

When we zoomed in more closely, we saw that he was flying with a sizable fish in his talons.

Because it takes a 14-mile hike or bike ride to get to this point, this area doesn't get many visitors. We were surprised to see a sizable cat in the brush beside the road close to the bay. Even though we both saw it, we weren't fast enough to get a good picture, but he's in there somewhere. We had read that they are catching and collaring ocelots in this refuge, and we think that we saw an ocelot today.

But the main animals that we saw in the refuge this afternoon were the herds of naigl. These Asian antelope seem to be doing well.

We were excited to get a good look at the first herd we spotted from a distance. But by the end of our ride, we were almost bored with them. We were able to get many more close views of these spike-horned antelopes. 

Originally they were brought to Texas for hunting, but some have escaped into this wildlife refuge where they are protected.

These animals seem to have the odd habit of re-using the same bathroom spot in the middle of the road over and over. We wished we would have counted the number of piles of naigl poop that we rode past in those 14 miles.

We also got to see many crested caracaras on this bike ride.

These raptors have interesting markings, with an orange face and a dark brown mullet.

We saw another caracara further away, standing atop a tree stump enjoying dinner. The large fish was still flopping as we watched this falcon eating from the distance.

With all of our stops to watch animals, the sun was getting low around mile 11. But we could see that something was crouching in the middle of the road ahead of us.

The cat let us get a little closer, always keeping an eye on our movement.

With our good camera, we could see that this was definitely a bob cat--the first one we had ever seen on a bike ride. This has been a great ride on a little-traveled road in a wildlife refuge filled with interesting animals!

On the trip back to our campground, the sun was setting and we had to wait for the drawbridge over the canal to lower in order to continue over the water. It's fun to be on the road again, exploring South Padre Island and taking a long bike ride today!