Magnus Takes a Short Sea Rim Break, Day 6

Tuesday July 14

Last day at the ocean. A tremendous thunderstorm came through in the night. At one point I got up thinking that the power was off but happily I was wrong. When morning came, there was still no sunshine but the storms were supposed to move out around noon. I'll was glad to have my chair dry out so my butt wouldn’t keep getting wet.

LATER:
It's almost noon and I'm still waiting for the rain to stop. I'd give up except I want to take my camera this time and it's not water resistant.

Green-winged Teal. Great excitement...until Ed noticed it was just a very realistic decoy someone left floating in the pond. Blah.

Two dowitcher in the puddles. All the rain left puddles on the roads all over, deep ones, and mostly full of fish. Birds most excited. I even saw stilts out on the roads.

Dowitcher, species unknown 

 

Black-necked Stilt 

 

Plover, species unknown 

Tern, species unknown 

 

Other than walking around looking for birds and a short jog on the highway, we didn't do anything. It was that kind of day.

Ghost crab on the beach 

Magnus Takes a Short Sea Rim Break, Day 5

Monday July 13

Woke up to heavy cloud cover and a looming atmosphere. At about 8:30 went to visit the pit toilet and got trapped inside by a downpour. But I’d had the brains to take the umbrella along.

I made it back with the umbrella protecting my phone but my socks were sopping wet. I wrung them out in the sink. I really need to buy some thinner socks for everyday use.

Then it really started raining. And thundering and lightning-ing. I've never seen such rain. (Almost) The motorhome's bedroom slide-out was leaking water all over the floor and no wonder—it was pouring off the roof. Wow.

Third day with no sewer. We don’t typically go four days without dumping but it should be possible. We are conserving water in every way possible--dumping the dehumidifier reservoir outside; keeping a bowl in the sink for dishwater; going to the latrine for number 2 and even number 1 except at night. It should work. 

We thought this was a Javelina but it was just a small wild hog:

Later (after the rain ended) we took a driver to McFaddin. It's just down the road--practically within walking distance. But the horrid biting bugs were there, en masses. At least I saw a bird, two of them--Least Bittern.

Then we returned to finish our boardwalk walk from the day before. White Ibis. Clapper Rail. Black Tern. Cool.

Later Molly and i did our sunset walk except there was no sunset. It was spitting bits of rain--not pleasant but not exactly unpleasant. Low tide; huge beach; waves far away and not too noisy. No people on beach whatsoever. Nice, kind of.

Next time here we should get site 11 (best view) or 12 (OK view and by pond)

 

Magnus Takes a Short Sea Rim Break, Day 4

Sunday July 12

Birds seen: Magnificent Frigatebird (2), Least Tern, Black-necked Stilt, Laughing Gull, Royal Tern, Brown Pelican, Yellowthroat (heard), Boat-tailed Grackle, Dowitcher, sp unknown.
Eastern Kingbird, Roseate Spoonbill.

Slow waffle breakfast; short jog; swimming. Very hot outside and the gulf water was bathtub warm, but when I got out of it, the air seemed a little cold. Not for long, of course.

We didn't stay long, about an hour maybe. Then we went back and ate lunch. Later we took a walk to find gators and got caught on the boardwalk by thunderstorms moving through. The lightning made us turn back.

But we got only a little wet before we made it home. Then I read books all afternoon until Molly's walk and then suppertime. Nice day. Except for the biting bugs on our evening walk. I don't know what they're called--they are little triangular moth like things.

Molly sees.........a buddy!

I think these are alligator tracks.  See the line for the tail?

 

Magnus Takes a Short Sea Rim Break, Day 3

Saturday July 11

First, good-bye to Martin Dies Jr. State Park:

 

 

 

 

 

 We left for Sea Rim State Park at 10:51. We only had a two-hour drive, but we didn’t expect to have any issue with the early check-in. If we did have an early check-in—we’d have to arrive before 2pm, which was not a given.

It was a very humid morning but not so hot as the day before. I guess the rain of the previous day helped a little. It didn’t rain all that much but it seemed to be sufficient.

The drive was boring—good—and we arrived in good time--about two and one-half hours without a stop. We wanted one but there weren’t any convenient pull-off places. No matter.

Since no one was in the office when we arrived, we just proceeded to our site. We knew the park well—it was probably our fourth time camping here. Or maybe fifth. This time we had the front spot closest to the boardwalk. I wanted the one closest to the beach access road, but that one was taken. It always is.

And that’s about it for the day. I took Molly for her long walk and ended up doing the whole boardwalk. In the little ponds in and around the campground, I saw a gator, raccoon, dowitchers (species unknown as usual), Black-necked stilts, avocets, and lots of red-winged blackbirds. Merlin informed me that the little birds I kept hearing call from the tall grasses were Yellowthroats, and also that the small terns were Least Tern.

 

 

Magnus Takes a Short Sea Rim Break, Day 2

Friday July 10

We left at 10:15, heading to Martin Dies Jr State Park. Getting to Route 59 required a lot of left turns and right turns on a lot of FMs and SHs. Not hard but not fun either.

It’s a pretty place, as I remembered. But our site didn’t have any lake view. Just a peek through the trees at some very brown water.

And we didn’t enjoy trying to deal with the Texas summer heat with only 30-amp power. We started off with both air conditioners on high, but even with the soft start feature, we tripped the breaker within 30 minutes. With only one of them running the motorhome cooled down after an hour or so. A threat of showers moved through and helped with the process.

 

The park had lots of nice trails. Molly and I took one that led us through the woods along the lake shore, ending up at the park boundary where the trail turned to the left. There were numbers on signs at intervals (mile markers) but there were confusing as heck. I saw a .5 miles and then later a 1.0 miles, but then after a few turns, there was another 1.0 mile sign.

Shortly after that I tried to stand still and see a Hooded Warbler singing his heart out in the bushes, and Molly and I were swarmed by a mess of mosquitoes. I tried to continue on to where the map showed the trail hitting the road, but I couldn’t estimate how far we had to go and gave up. Backtracking, I somehow got off the trail--we were on A trail, just not THE trail. I even tried Google maps but it wouldn’t show enough detail to help us. So eventually I just went back to the point on the trail where I recognized something (a bench) and headed back the way we came. And then I started recognizing things again. Whew.

Not that we were ever seriously lost. In a pinch I could go cross country to the lake shore and follow it back. But cross country in East Texas forests is never a pleasant way to go.

On way back I saw a 1.5 mile marker. Weird.

Birds seen or heard definitively: Hooded Warbler. Little Blue Heron. Wood Thrush. Lots of Summer Tanagers. The usual mockingbirds, etc.

And one cute little alligator.

 

Review Martin Dies Junior State Park
On the swampy side of a big lake 

Before going here, make sure you know which unit your campground is in. The main office where you check in is in the Hen House Ridge Unit, and the nice people in the office should be able to direct you. If your GPS tells you to bypass the office turn-off and head across the lake, don’t listen! There is road construction blocking one lane of the bridge and we wasted fifteen minutes going across, turning around, and coming back.

Our site 301 was a nice pull-thru site with decent asphalt. The water hookup was fine but having only 30-amp electricity in the Texas summertime is the pits. We accidentally let both air conditioners of our motorhome run on high and tripped the breaker after fifteen minutes. We could run one of them on high or both of them on low. We have soft starts on the A/C units but with the antiquated 30-amp breakers that wasn’t sufficient.

The site had full sun, but most of the other sites were shady and pleasant. There were a lot of mosquitoes on the trails (of course) but in the campground they weren’t bad at all, despite the proximity of the lake. We could sit outside without bug spray, even at night.

The trails were pretty nice but I’d suggest taking a trail map with you. Google Maps works out there but the accuracy is low.