Thursday at Matagorda Bay

 (August 13)

Thursday started out with a Mammoth disaster trying to happen. The refrigerator wasn't cooling--the inside temperature was nearing sixty degrees. We turned the setting down lower and put a block of ice inside (a frozen half-gallon milk carton from the stash that we keep for the cooler).

For no apparent reason, I was feeling bummed that day and I wrote this:
I need to learn to shake off camping's minor issues, like my sore upper hip/lower back, the fridge not cooling, and the heat, of course. It's August in Texas--we expected cool? Not likely. And my Pepperidge Farm bread sucks.

Ed went surf fishing again.  He didn't have any bites, not even a nice big conch-type seashell like the one he pulled in Wednesday.  Meanwhile I took my camera and walked Molly out back to the pools of water with the sea birds. I spent a long time trying to photograph a Ruddy Turnstone, only to go back to Ed on the beach and find two! They don't hug the shore a lot like Sanderling, and they're a whole lot bigger, too. They don't even go hear the waves.

I took a lot of pictures of the other birds, too. Later, looking at the pictures I took, I realized that I'd seen both a Caspian Tern and a Royal Tern. Here's the Royal:

 

That's also when I identified the Willet. 

 

 

 

 

And I'd gotten pictures of both a 

Ring-billed gull --

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and a
Black Skimmer---

 

Such an interesting bird! It forages at night, flying in small groups to skim fish off the surface.

I didn't see them at all, yet they showed up in my pictures. It's lucky I didn't see them with the binoculars. Molly was bored enough standing still while I snapped pictures without having me spend an extra hour identifying the birds.

That was the day we decided that we were tired of driving by fresh seafood stores and it was time to go inside! We'd expected to see people selling shrimp by the side of the road, like they do in the suburbs of Houston, but we never did. However, we'd been driving by a building with a "Fresh Table Shrimp" sign every time we went out. I believe it was called Rawling's Bait Camp.

They did have all kind of bait inside, but they also had big tanks of freshly caught shrimp. We got four pounds of the jumbo sized ones, six or eight per pound. The guy said shrimping season had started July 15, which was in keeping with what I'd researched. I wish we'd bought more and brought them back...but I don't remember the price and don't want to ask. I heard him say it, it sounded reasonable, and that's okay.  Sometimes it's better not to remember.

We were soon back at camp, de-heading and peeling shrimp and throwing together tempura batter and cutting up a few vegetables. Ed did most of the cooking this time--he does a better job than me, probably because he takes more care at it. I tend to slop things around when I get bored. Soon it was ready--tempura vegetables and big old shrimp.

It was hard work, but we finished them all.