Magnus Goes Beaching, Day 9

Wednesday, December 11 2024

Today we went to Galveston Island State Park. Lovely place. Saw the statue of the extinct Eskimo Curlew which used to winter on Galveston Island.

 

 Went on a long walk looking for alligators but saw none.  Over by the statue and observation tower, I saw lots of Great Egret, plus a few Snowys, Herons, and White Ibis.   When we first arrived, Northern Harrier, Kestrel, and Phoebe.  Plus a sparrow I couldn't identify, as usual.  Will I never ever get to add a Dusky Seaside Sparrow to my life list?

For some reason I thought you had to pay at the state park even if you had a park pass, but I was happily proven wrong. Of course, we still have to pay our $2 toll every time we cross the bridge onto Galveston Island.  Ignorant.

But the state park has two areas of RV campgrounds, oceanside and bayside.  They're both very nice but of course we prefer oceanside.  Maybe we'll stay there in a year or so.

 

 

We went for a long walk on the beach there, but it appeared to be mucky black and dirty--oil residue?  Unlike "our" beach which was much cleaner.  There were almost no birds, there, either. Just a very few Sanderlings.  So our beach is much better in that regard, with gulls, terns, Sanderlings, Willet, maybe Plover (can't tell), and gulls of course.  Every gull I've looked at closely has been a Ring-Billed Gull.  Funny, I thought the Laughing Gulls were here this time of year, but no.

We got back at around 2pm but then Ed wanted to go shopping again. Bah.  I guess we'll go, after I have a shower and give Molly another long walk. She got lots of walking this morning, but when we leave she'll be stuck inside for hours.

 



LATER
Shopping turned out better than I expected. With the parking figured out, we were able to secure a spot for two hours for $4 and then go all up and down the street to multiple little tourist trap shops. They were not all as overpriced as the first one had been, and I picked up a couple of little things.  We did find a lovely throw pillow with a pelican design that would probably have made an okay present for Grandmother, but it cost $95. Who pays $95 for a pillow?

One thing I have to say about the whole Galveston (in winter, on a weekday) experience, all of the salespeople are exceedingly happy to see you.  Restaurants, too.

Our dinner at Katie's Seafood turned out a mixed bag.  The waiter was overly effusively friendly and therefore extremely annoying, plus he took a long time to bring our ticket and an even longer time to retrieve it.  I was eager to go home to Molly--time spent waiting on something that should have been trivial, was not time well spent.

The food was fresh, locally sourced--mostly from their own ships--and very well cooked.  But it was expensive and skimpy for the price.  Ed had a seafood fry with boudin and some sausage and beans---that was sufficient, but I would have expected more for the price. I had parmesan crusted snapper in a cream sauce over cabbage and mixed vegetables, and, well, it tasted great. But the vegetables were boring broccoli/cauliflower/carrots and only a small piece of cabbage that I could see. and it didn't come with salad or bread or anything interesting to give it a garnish. If I did reviews, I'd give the place 3 stars. Plus the restaurant was loud to the point ear-splitting. Wish we'd eaten outside on the dock. They appeared to have heaters out there, because the people there were not wearing heavy coats against the chill.

A brief interruption to the beach adventure...

 The daily walk (yeah, right) for December 29th revealed:

 A fried egg on the ground?

A winter rose, sigh!

And birds--Eastern Phoebe, American Robin (heard), Red-bellied Woodpecker, White-Breasted Nuthatch (heard), White-throated Sparrow, Harris' Sparrow, Common Crow, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Cedar Waxwing, American Goldfinch, Carolina Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Red-shouldered Blackbird. In other words, the usual.

Magnus Goes Beaching, Day 8

Tuesday, December 10 2024 

Slow morning. Not nearly as chilly as I feared--when the sun is out, which is often, it's warm enough for a tee-shirt.  We went for a drive to the little nature boardwalk north of here and then down to Brazoria NWR.  No alligators but plenty of nice birds. Osprey, Little Blue Heron, coots, cormorants (species unknown), ducks, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Eastern Phoebe, Kestrel.

 

I'm trying to slow down (figuratively) and look closer at places and things.  Life is going by too quickly--I need to stop and stare. A lot.

 
Out morning took so long, the only way I was going to get in a nice long jog along the beach was to postpone shopping until when we went out to eat. Which made a lot of sense because Galveston was about a 30 minute drive away, and that's where they both were (shopping and eating).

Shopping was a bit of a wash.  It turns out that you have to pay to park almost everywhere you go in Galveston. The garages were $20.  We never found out how much the parking meters cost because you had to pay for them online (we thought) and we didn't have a half-hour to kill downloading an app and filling out all the details. It didn't seem not worth it, just to waste money on tourist trap junk.

So we stopped in front of one store and then left. Went to another where there seemed to be parking (probably illegal) and stayed inside for a while. But the prices were so ridiculously high, such as $16 for a kids tee shirt or $40 for a Stitch stuffed animal, that I couldn't get up any interest in buying even the tiniest of stocking stuffers.  Then we went on to some other stores in the downtown area, but the parking issues discouraged us.

By then it was five, but when I looked up directions to the restaurant I found that it closed early on Tuesdays.  So no go.  We had planned to eat out twice more this trip so we decided to search up one of the other restaurants in the area, go there, then do the original restaurant on Wednesday. Then we'd skip the Pappadeaux stop on our last day and just eat the food we had at the motorhome.

 

So we ended up at Fisherman's Wharf. Not an original name, but not a chain, either. A big swankified place right on the bayside water. They had a dedicated parking lot where you could park for free if they validated your ticket for a meal. So there--free parking!  

Of course it cost nearly $80 for the meal plus tip. Ed had a mixed seafood fry which was very good, he said. I had Parmesan Crusted redfish with a salad and vegetables. Plus freee bread and butter.  Very, very good.

 

 

 

View through window of restaurant:

And after that, Molly and I had one of the most miserable of before bedtime walks. The wind was very strong and directly out of the north with no wind breaks at all. Well, except for buildings and there was only one of those to help us. The temperature wasn't all that bad--fifties--but I'd swear the wind chill dropped that to below freezing. Brrr.

 

Magnus Goes Beaching, Day 7

Monday, December 9 2024

Forgot to take campsite pictures at Palmetto, so here they are. After we left.

At the dump station

Okay drive to Bluewater RV Resort in Freeport.  It seemed a nice place--big; just across the highway from the ocean, and the highway down here has very little traffic.  I've not yet had to wait for more than one car to cross it.

The best sites on the beachside are back-in, but they're only about 40' long and their web page wouldn't let me book one.  If I'd not said "towing" I could have gotten one and then just parked the car in the plentiful parking spaces by the canal.  But no matter--there's no one between our pull-thru site and the ocean, so if we stand on the picnic table or sit inside the RV with the front window shade open, we have a marvelous ocean view.

 

It was windy and warm when we arrived, so after hooking up we took a nice long walk on the beach. Lovely.  Rough water and too cold for swimming, but just right for walking with a light jacket on.  The sun was in and out of clouds all afternoon, but when I tried to take a sunset walk with Molly, the clouds gathered and the sun disappeared.  Overnight a cold front came in, so when we woke up it was 64 degrees but that was the high for the day.  Still not cold, but that''s getting ahead of myself.

There was a canal behind us, and all along one side are RV sites; next to the sites there's a little driveway and another row of sites beside a wetlands.  Lovely swampy area full of birds.  And mosquitos, of course, but they're not too bad right now.

Not much to report.  We finished watching A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix. Amusing and with a good, sweet/sad ending.

What a life.

Magnus Goes Beaching, Day 6

Sunday, December 8 2024

Still wet and chilly, but only a bit of rain. Had a breakfast at Hermano's Mexican in Luling. I thought the food was great although the coffee had a nasty whang, like someone had brewed chicory coffee in the pot and not cleaned it well.

Ed didn't like his food much, but that's normal for him these day. His diet is so restrictive that he can't really enjoy much except meat, eggs, and non-starchy vegetables. He ate the tortillas but probably felt guilty about them.  I thought they were fresh and yummy.  And nopalitos!  Yum.

Ed and I took a few walks (with Molly, of course!). First to check out the CCC water tower and the little pond it fed.  According to the sign, it was being used now to maintain the water level in the park and keep the Palmettos and other wet-loving species happy.  They certainly seemed so!

 

Palmettos, yoo-hoo.

Then I wanted to go walk around the oxbow lake but didn't want to wear out Ed's hip on the long road walk to get there. The map indicated a faster route involving a "low water crossing" on the San Marcos river. With all the rain of the last couple of days, I didn't expect a low water crossing to be crossable, but we walked over to see.

Lovely!  It was a wide concrete bridge across the river. There were a few puddles in it, but the water itself was at least a couple of yards down below.  I don't remember exactly--maybe a couple of feet.  But still plenty down.

 Birds at the dry lake: two Black-Necked Stilt and an American Egret.

Molly found a snake but it was too cold to be very active

A Palmetto that made it? Weird.

After crossing that, it was only a short walk through a tent camping area to the lake.  And a short half or three-quarter mile walk around.  No interesting birds and no alligators, but still a very pleasant walk.

Returning, Ed had a long conversation with a park host who was taking his exercise by bicycling through the park.  They both had leg/hip problems of some sort, so they chatted for quite a while while Molly and I wandered around and checked out the "Refectory".  I thought it was an actual restaurant, but it was just a very old CCC-era building with eating tables in the middle and closed off areas on either side, possibly where they once cooked meals.  I wish now I'd tried to go inside them, but didn't think about it at the time. I just assumed they were off-limits.

I don't remember much else of excitement about the day. It was nice enough that it was finally not raining.  I tried to repeat the Palmetto trail walk in the evening, but Molly smelled a varmint and nearly took my arm off.  After she calmed down, we continued the walk, but cautiously and carefully.

Magnus Goes Beaching, Day 5

Saturday, December 7, 2024

 Good-bye Choke Canyon!

Oddly hard drive to Palmetto State Park. I think it was raining.  I decided to stop for gas before going into the campground; the place was the Love's in Luling, Texas and it turned out to be a very tiny Love's with only four truck pumps, all occupied.. Ed wanted to air up the tires, but a truck pulled up behind him and he got cold feet and went on. The issue was that he had new apparatus to make the Love's air pump work with our tires and he needed time to get comfortable with it.

Our onboard air compressor wasn't able to get up to pressure. He tried, after we arrived at the campground, but wasn't successful. So we still need air.  Not badly, but it would be nice.

All day long, I was chilly to the point of miserable. But then we went to dinner with Bob & T, and that was warming and very pleasant. There was a cold draft in the restaurant whenever the front door was opened, but not so bad as to make my teeth chatter.

Palmetto is a very nice park. The campsites are a little tight, but not at all impossible for a 35-foot RV. I chose the largest site I could find, a 55-foot one, and the Jeep fit neatly in front of the RV.  We didn't even have to overhang the back end of the RV over the site's backstop like we usually do.

On arrival, Molly and i took a walk in the misty rain.  Then we left her behind to go eat.  I had a fried crawfish salad that was huge and delish!  Plus Bob bought onion rings for everyone.

Molly's bed time walk was down the Palmetto trail with a flashlight. Lovely. But wet. And chilly.

Magnus Goes Beaching, Day 4

Friday, December 6, 2024

We drove back to Beeville today to return the stuff we bought the day before.  Sad.  But at least we stopped on the way back at the South Shore Unit. It was more or less deserted, and it was sad to see that all the lovely facilities they built were sitting unused.  The boat ramp was dry.  I later read that the area had not received significant rainfall in several years and that the lake was at an all-time low level.

Which agrees with what we saw.  The 75-acre lake, an offshoot of the main lake, was almost completely dry with black, hard-crusted bottom.  There were a few remaining pools of water off in the distance, which held Great Egret, Black-Necked Stilt, a White Ibis.  And of course Killdeer in the flats.

It was spitting rain off and on all day with a cool breeze.  The sun tried to break through the clouds but never succeeded. Still, Molly and I got a long walk in and around the park, with Ed coming along for the quick trip to the 75-acre lake.

Magnus Goes Beaching, Day 3

Thursday, December 5, 2024

Add to the bird list American Pelicans, brown thrasher, osprey, red-winged blackbird, Great-Tailed Grackle, Killdeer, Coots, Caracara.  And for a crowning touch--a flock of turkey skulked through the campground during our morning Molly walk.  

Later when we were driving back into the campground (we went out to try and get some adapters to air up the tires; the ones Ed had were not compatible with the pumps at Love's truck stop), I saw a pair of Great Horned Owls, just sitting out in the daylight in a tree by the road.  Mind you, it was a cloudy and misty day, so maybe they thought it was twilight.  Silly birds.

We also stopped at a couple of stores to try and find a replacement charcoal grill.  The campground host at the park check-in station had warned me not to leave the grill out at night because the Javelina might tear it up.  And I had ignored her.  As it turned out, it didn't even take an overnight.  They swooped thorugh the campground in the hour or so after Ed had finished cooking and knocked the grill over while the coals were still hot.  No danger of fire--the ground was very damp.  but I'm surprised the silly things didn't learn their lesson sooner--hope they did this time.

My typical view of a Javelina:

 

But I did get a good look at this smallish one:

Magnus Goes Beaching, Day 2

Wenesday, December 4, 2024

Our RV doorstep broke while we were at the dump station. Ed fixed it, using a bolt he'd procured the last time it broke.  Hopefully this is the end of problems with it.  It was misting rain and not a pleasant thing to be doing, but it didn't take him very long.

The rain continued as we drove. We took the Pickle Parkway to get around Austin and San Antonio.  It was an easy drive, racking up tolls all the way.

Choke Canyon wasn't a canyon, as I expected. But it was really nice. The lake was very low. The campsites reminded me a lot of a COE park--grass cut too short. Full of deer. But there, there were birds!

I saw: several Golden-fronted woodpeckers.  There was an odd bird that perched in a tree near the campsite, probably a male Cooper's Hawk. It had a very strongly marked cap, therefore a male Coop's, but the tail was very squared off and not rounded as they usually are.  Butterbutts. Some other interesting small birds.  Green Jays.  Brown Thrasher.
Ed saw a Vermilion Flycatcher for the first time--lovely bird.

 Vermilion Flycatcher:

 
The place marked as a "bird sanctuary" on Google Maps was actually just a big bird blind. But a very nice one.  Lot's of green jays.

Magnus Goes Beaching

 Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Started off our big beach trip at Jim Hogg COE Campground on Lake Georgetown.  It was a typical COE park, reminding me very much of the ones around Belton Lake.  The roads getting there were bad and had lots of deer. The lake edge was very bare and the grass was mowed way too short; the trees were small, red or ashe juniper and small-leaved oaks.

The campsites were huge, with long gravel driveways and roofed structures over chunky picnic tables.  And I liked it, other than the bareness and the lack of bird life.  The lake wasn't all that low, either.  It held a pied-billed grebe and a few coots and that's about all.

 

I think if they left more trees and planted more bushes and native plants and didn't cut the grass nearly so short around the campground, there'd be more birds.

After hooking up, there was just time for a quick Molly walk in and around the campground.  It had a trail, but we didn't make it that far.  And then Ed and I hopped in the Jeep and went to get carryout sushi from Miso Sushi. It was good, but I think next time we're here we should try somewhere else.  There are several restaurants in the area. The sushi was good, and the soup okay, but the salad they put in the order was just icky and the noodle dish not very good at all.  

It rained on Molly and me during our evening walk--not hard, but not a light mist either.  Then it rained off and on all night.

Review: Dead Man's Trail

Dead Man's Trail
by Bev Pettersen

Very short and fast-reading thriller with a K-9 co-star.  All familiar characters to me, and I was more than happy to visit them again. (Except, of course, the perp and his victims.  They were new.)  The only complaint I could possibly have is that I wish the books were a little longer, to give me more time to spend in her world.

I do wish that the author would find a better way to introduce the story than depicting an episode in the victims point of view.  It starts with the runaway kid and I was anticipating having to skip half of the book, if she was going to keep switching back and forth, but luckily she didn't.  Only once more, briefly, near the end, did she switch POV.  But still I don't know why it was necessary to start off the book that way--it seems like there would be a million clever ways to launch a story than show "the incident" like they do on TV crime dramas.  And this one wasn't even an "incident"--just a bit of a kid's life.

Review: Murder Under Her Skin

Murder Under Her Skin
by Stephen Spotswood

Even better than the first one!  I don't know how he does it.  The books remind me so much of Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin that I find myself grinning at least once a chapter. But don't get me wrong--it's not the slightest bit derivative.  The only overt resemblance to the Rex Stout books are in the broad outline--the books star a lively, limber sidekick to a somewhat housebound almost-genius detective; they live in New York with a loyal housekeeper/cook, and they cross swords with the police on a frequent basis.

But that's just the barest outline to all the good stuff in these books.  The characters are outstanding and intriguing; the action is frequent and gripping; the plots are great and the dialog/narrative witty and hard to put down.

I'd rush through the next two books in the series in a flash if I wasn't so disappointed to know that there only were two more.  Luckily, the author is still writing!

Review: My Grape Year

 My Grape Year
by Laura Bradbury

This wasn't a good fit for me, so I will not give it a rating.  For what it is--a teenage romance--it's okay, and if that is what you want, go for it.  

But I failed to realize that's what it was.  The first half of the book was what I expected, an interesting and amusing story of a young Canadian who lucks into a student exchange program to France.  Her stories of her host families, their food, and the whole culture shock of it all were precious.  (Sweet, funny, painful, etc.)

Then it became a simple and extended "true love" story that went on forever.  Or so it seemed to me.  If you're young and in love, or want to be, it may be perfect for you.  I found it boring and eventually gave up.  A few pages or a couple of chapters of fiery stares, tingling touches, and deep kisses, are about all I can take. Not a half of a book!

Review: What We Owe To Ourselves

 What We Owe to Ourselves: a 500-mile hike on the Colorado Trail

by Nicole Antoinette

Short but very engaging hiking adventure. The first part is painfully scary because she's experiencing nausea to the point where she can't hardly force down food.  She's an experienced hiker and has packed what seems to be sensible, nutritious meals, but then she can't hardly stand to eat them.  I began to wonder if she was going to DNF because of weakness...

But she forges on through ups and downs; aches and pains; cold nights (wrong sleeping bag);  losses (hiking companions); a frozen water filter (maybe, but not to risk giardia?); and overambitious goals.  And we're with her, every step of the way.

It's not all pain and suffering--not a bit.  It's exciting and challenging and confidence-building.  And she has some amazingly deep insights along the way.  I'd share some cool quotes but I don't want to steal her thunder. Or quote out of context.

Read it!

Review: Ambush

 Ambush
By Barbara Nickless

Drew to an end---

Oops. Almost gave away something I shouldn't.  Beside, it didn't draw anything to an end, rather just added another phase of a continuing theme going through the first books. Maybe there won't ever be an end to it.

Anyway, this was a complete book in itself with an ending that gave you a chance to take a breath, finally. Because the rest of it is so fast-paced that it was nearly impossible to put down and I always ended up reading more than I'd intended to.  She's just that good of an action writer. And the characters are superb, complex, intriguing. And it hurts so much when they die, because, yes, a lot of people do die in the making of this book.  Trigger warning here--not for the faint of heart.

I won't repeat the synopsis you can find on the cover; just say it's every much as good as her others. And as painful.

Review: Dog Friendly

Dog Friendly
by Victoria Schade

Everything everyone said good about it is true. It's a lovely story about a stressed-out veterinarian, a foster dog with issues, and an Island.  It's sweet; only slightly syrupy; and with enough realistic pain to make for a perfect beach book.

For me, though...I guess I just don't do romance these days. The romance part of the book almost ruined it for me. Everything else about it was nearly perfect, so if you're down with a touch of romance in your beach read, I heartily recommend it.

Review: Beachcomber's Guide

 Beachcomber's Guide to Gulf Coast Marine Life: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida
    
Rothschild, Susan B.

Not so good.  I'm sure it's accurate and informative, but the illustrations were all black-and-white drawings and not nearly enough of them.  And the descriptions too short.  It's possibly okay as a reference work, but I suspect trying to use it for field identification would be a waste.  I didn't manage to read it, either--not exactly readable except in the way that an encyclopedia can be readable.  Too bad.

Good try, but needed much, much more.

Review: The Gardener's Guide to Prairie Plants

The Gardener's Guide to Prairie Plants
by Neil Diboll

A reference work that was still entirely readable. Cool!  He describes a lot of the flowers and grasses of the American prairie with tips on growing and propagating them.  And then has a whole section on how a person can go about creating his own prairie--cool.  He has the typical version I've read before, which involves heavy use of specific herbicides.  But then a version on how one might prepare the ground without herbicides--exactly what I wanted!

And then a section on how to use fire to maintain the prairie.  Very informative, and for people like me who don't have the space or the desire to use fire, information on the timing of mowing to mimic the action of fire.

I'd love to have a copy of my own.

Review: Otherlands

Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds
by Thomas Halliday

I listened to the audiobook while jogging, so I missed out on imagining the scenes and stories he was relating. But still it was gorgeously rendered--for many different times and places, an evocative description of the creatures alive, how they lived, how they died and often--when we knew it--how they changed over time.

It was too full to describe. Overwhelming.  And I suspect that I could go back and listen again and pick up facts and pictures I missed out on the first time. Probably I will--it's certainly staying on my playlist for a redo.