\

Wanderung 11

A Tantalizing Taste of the Texas Tropical Trail

January-February 2006

Saturday, January 28th, 2006 - Driving along the Gulf Coast in Texas.

A particularly low tide greeted us at dawn and we took one last walk south along the beach to the inlet for Port Isabel. The sun rose like an orange ball over the clouds hovering on the horizon, and flocks of seagulls kept us company as we strolled over the wet sand. Monika was finding quite nice shells and even some pieces of coral that were rather rare. I tried to look for some coral also, but I turned out to be no match for Monika's "gathering" skill. Monika took pity on me, however, and decided to help me by acting like a pointer or bird dog; she would freeze in such a position that she was pointing at the piece of coral but not make any overt move to retrieve it. That gave me the opportunity to cast about right in front of her and "find" a piece of coral for myself, and that worked pretty well except one time I was just about to step on the piece so Monika broke her silence and said, "Stop, Look!", thus letting me know it was right in front of my foot and avoiding me stepping on it. I felt a bit like some hunters must feel when a bird dog stops and points at bushes with a covey of quail in them. I mean, how does the dog know? Similarly, the ability to scan a beach full of shells and pieces of shells and see a tiny arm of coral sticking up from the sand is a skill that my wife undoubtedly has but I, equally clearly, do not.

Along the way to the stone pier we encountered two Great Blue Herons, and I witnessed something I had never seen before. One heron flew over and landed about 10 feet from the other one who was quietly fishing (not that herons every become really raucous, of course). After staring at each other for a few seconds they both spread their wings and kind of hopped toward each other. It looked like some kind of aggression display used to defend a territory. In any case, the smaller of the two herons flew off for parts unknown and the "winner" started wading along the beach, looking for fish.

We had breakfast after our walk and then hitched up our salt-encrusted truck and trailer (one of the disadvantages of camping right on the beach was the salt spray blowing in off the ocean!) and were on our way north. We followed Route 77 almost due North for a little over two hours. That part of Texas was extraordinarily flat; I don't believe we ever exceeded 20 feet above sea level for the 100 miles or so we drove north. Officially we were still following the Texas Tropical Trail, but after a while the palm trees lining the road gave way to the familiar Texas brush lands and plains. Occasionally the land became more fertile and would shift to fields wtih row crops, and some of those fields were already showing new green shoots.

All in all, the southern tip of Texas was relatively empty, and that was surprising when you think about other southern coastal areas in the U.S. such as southern California or Florida. Southern California has desert and Mexico nearby, but no habitable coastal islands and not nearly as many swim-able beaches as southern Texas. Southern Florida has islands and a lot of swim-able beaches, but no easy border crossing to another culture like the Mexican border in southern Texas. Even southern Arizona, which has desert but no coastline or coastal islands to offer, seems to have more development than the southern tip of Texas. Why is that? The best answer we could come up with is that southern Texas is so far from the East Coast or West Coast population centers that people simply do not want to retire here because of the traveling distance. If I had to hazard a guess, I would guess that as the other retirement centers become fully populated, the southern tip of Texas may become a major retirement center for the future.

Surviving the "No gas for 60 miles" section of Route 77, we finally passed a small town with a gas station about noon and then turned east about 10 miles to camp at a Good Sam RV park. The park was located on an arm of a bay of the Gulf that was moderately scenic and it offered water, nice showers, and, most importantly, electricity, all for only $18 per night. As soon as we were hooked up we started plugging in all possible batteries to be recharged in preparation for our next session of dry camping. We aldo kept our computers hot trying to catch up with those tasks. I had a backlog of panoramic pictures dating back to Big Bend Park that I had to stitch together on Baby, after which we had to transfer them to Daddy and burn the backup CDs of all the pictures "just in case".

That plus taking some long awaited (and much appreciated) showers took us the better part of the afternoon. But while we worked we listened to the Metropolitan Opera play Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutti" on the radio and since the "work" involved assembling and storing some really beautiful and unique pictures, it was really a very pleasant way to pass the afternoon. In fact, I cannot imagine many more pleasant ways to spend an afternoon than with beautiful pictures and beautiful music in a rural campground; few times in life are really more fun than afternoons like that.

That evening we listened to "Prairie Home Companion" from 5 to 7 p.m. while we had dinner, and then turned in with our next Anne Perry book, "Cain, His Brother". Somehow the Inspector Monk series of books was just as gripping (addictive?) as a soap opera on TV. We kept reading the next book at least in part to find out how the relationship between Monk and Hester, two star-crossed lovers if ever there were such, would progress (or not). Each book had a perfectly fine murder mystery as its focus, of course, and that plus the vivid descriptions of everyday life in Victorian England created a quite fascinating combination. The books were usually such page-turners, especially at the end, that we really had to force ourselves to put them down and go to sleep for the night.

Copyright 2006 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

January 06
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31
February 2006
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28

Return to the Wanderungs Homepage.
Sign the Guestbook or Read the Guestbook.
Comments about this site? Email the Webmaster.
Contact Bob and Monika at bob_monika@hotmail.com.