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Wanderung 11

A Tantalizing Taste of the Texas Tropical Trail

January-February 2006

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2006 - A day at the campground on Padre Island National Seashore, Texas.

This was a personal maintenance day. I was desperate for a (hot) shower, partly to wash my hair, so I was finally driven to reconnecting the water heater, filling it, lighting it, and then finally taking a shower in our miniscule bathroom. However, after washing my hair and everything else a couple of times I finally felt human again. Monika of course did likewise, and by that time our gray water tank was full, so we hooked up the trailer and pulled it over to the dump station close to the campground. After dumping all the wastewater and filling up with fresh water we were ready to go for another 4-6 days except that the trailer's battery was wearing out and we had no easy way of recharging it.

By the time we were finished setting the trailer back into our campsite and unhooking everything, it was early afternoon but too late for the Ranger talk at the Visitor Center. Rather than driving off to do something else, we settled in for a nice, relaxing afternoon of working on the computers and reading a bit. Monika settled in with Barbara Michael's "Patriot's Dream" while I updated the journal.

As evening approached we stirred ourselves to take another walk on the beach, but this time with sandals so that we could wade through the waves at the water's edge. That turned out to keep our feet cool, at least, and to be a lot of fun in the bargain. We walked north and collected garbage along the way, but there was noticeably less than when we had swept the same area two days previously. The most ironic piece of of garbage we collected was the remains of a styrofoam cup with "Don't Mess With Texas" proudly emblazoned on its side. Putting anti-littering messages on potential litter seemed to be having about as much effect as the "Just Say No" campaign to reduce teenage pregnancy.

About halfway down the beach to a washed-up channel marker, we saw a shelf of seashells pop up out of the sand after a wave had passed over them. As it turned out, these seashells were attached to living critters and as soon as the wave had ebbed they squirmed their way back down into the wet sand until there was no sign of them at all. Fascinated, we watched this cycle repeat itself several times to be certain of what we were seeing; I had just never seen shells systematically popping up and down like that. My stereotype of seashells up to this point was of a rather sedentary and inactive animal content to sit around and catch whatever floated by. So seeing these shells doing "The Wave" at the seashore came as quite a surprise.

From the sea shell show at the sea shore side (say it quickly 3 times!), we continued walking a ways past a big old channel marker stranded on the beach, and then turned around to head back to camp. The sun was setting by this point and the temperatures correspondingly dropping, making the trailer a lot more comfortable. With no electricity for air conditioning, of course, the trailer temperatures tended to rise into the 80s during sunny days despite the low angle of the winter sun.

Fortunately the propane stove in the trailer did not require any electric power, so we could still cook dinner without any problems. Afterwards we turned in for the night reading Anne Perry's next book in the Inspector Monk saga, "Weighed In The Balance" by lantern light.

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

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