After a lazy day on the beach, we head north to Matagorda Bay Nature Park.

South Padre Island beach and dunes

Surrounded by behemoths

We arrived at South Padre Island on Thursday, so we are just about at the southern most spot in Texas.  We are staying in a more developed area at a KOA among all the "big boys", recreational vehicles which are 30-40 feet long, outside TVs, towing their cars etc. The weather has been lovely, 70's.

Yesterday we went to Laguna Atacosa National Wildlife Refuge which is on the coast of mainland Texas and had a very informative 3 hour tour. We were surprised it had so many visitors as the last 5 miles of road were terrible! The refuge covers four ecosystems (North-thronscrub forest, South-tropical, East-coastal wetlands, West-desert)  has a diverse bird population and provides habitat for several endangered species, including the ocelot and aplomado falcon. The photos of the green jay, roadrunner (we also saw the coyote), alligator
 and "horse-crippler" cactus are all from the park.

Beep-beep!

Green Jay

Today we visited a sea turtle rehabilitation center and then headed to the beach. We were so lazy that we drove our truck right onto the beach along with all the other lazy people.  We walked the beach and  picked up some trash, especially those flimsy plastic grocery bags that the turtles eat because they look like jellyfish. I can totally understand mistaking them for jellyfish! Needless to say they are not good for the turtles. or other marine creature.  I think George has a photo of one of the bags where someone has NOT followed the directions printed on the bag!










Estoy haciendo amigos con un pirata. (I hope this says what I was hoping to say...)

Wednesday January 27, 2016 Corpus Cristi

Before leaving Padre Island we went to Corpus Cristi to see the Texas State Aquarium and the aircraft carrier USS Lexington.

The aquarium had  exhibits on local sea life from the Gulf, including the the role the oil rigs have played on forming underwater ecosystems, the invasive lionfish and the endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle. If you catch a lionfish, there are restaurants that will cook it up for you!

Sea turtle at Texas State Aquarium

Comb jellies always put on a good show!

Flight deck of the Lexington

The aircraft carrier Lexington was constructed at the Quincy Ship Yard in Quincy, Massachusetts and commissioned in 1943. During its construction it was learned that the previous ship "Lexington" had been lost in the Coral Sea, so the new aircraft carrier was named the "Lexington" to replace the lost ship.
The Lexington saw major action in the Pacific and became known as the "Blue Ghost" because it was reported sunk four times by "Tokyo Rose", but yet kept re-appearing!

South Padre Island  across Laguna Madre

Now we are headed to South Padre Island, the most southern point in Texas.

Great Blue Heron

We were back to Padre Island National Seashore for our 9:30 AM bird tour. Today is cooler and quite windy with some rain (lluvia), but the tour was in a park van, and we saw quite a few birds, although they were ḧunkered down!

Curlew

Sandhill Cranes

Visited Padre Island National Seashore with its beautiful beach and continuous low roar of breaking waves. Padre Island NS is the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and unlike Cape Cod NS, you will not find even a pebble on it, which is great for walking barefoot.

Besides my small broken pieces of shells, and other friendly walkers, there were shore birds running back and forth to avoid the approaching waves and a couple of pretty awesome jellyfish! Cabbage head jellyfish, which we touched (very gently) with a shell. No signs of life were noted...It was about the size of my stretched out hand.

Padre Island is also a nesting place of ridley sea turtles starting in April and many birds. Tomorrow morning we are going on a bird tour with a park ranger, so expect many of George's bird photos!

Bonito sombrero! (...almost forgot we can speak Spanish!)

Galveston Texas
Hola!
Galveston Island is like one big sand bar ~27 miles long. Which makes it great for l o n g walks on the beach (playa) on the Gulf side, and for birds on the marshy bay side, but not so good for hurricanes. After the devastating hurricane of 1900 when most of the city was demolished with 6000+ dead, they built a seawall and raised the city up to a high point of 16 feet above sea level. (Our townhouse at NF is 50-60 feet above sea level.)

In 2008 with Hurricane Ike, the island was seriously flooded and 20-30,000 trees on the island died from the salt water. Some of the dead tree trunks were carved in place into wooden sculptures. The mermaid is one of these sculptures. She is known as "Tina", as in Ike (hurricane) and Tina Turner.

A typical Victorian house that survived the hurricane of 1900.

The beach at Galveston Island State Park where we are camping in the Casita.

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Hi,

As you all can see by the title, we can now speak Spanish! Casita Aventuras (Little House Adventures) will help us share stories and photos from our travels...but only if you really want to know about them. Every post will have at least one Spanish word, so that you will know that indeed we now know how to speak (some) Spanish.