Friday at Matagorda Bay and Yegua Creek Campground

(August 14)

Moving day, but I had plans first. I ate a quick breakfast--actually, I fixed one for both of us--did dishes, cleaned up all my stuff, walked Zack and then headed out with Mollydog and the camera. My original plan was to walk out the boardwalk to the end and see the ocean waves crashing one more time. But on the previous day, my plans had changed. I wasn't there to see ocean waves, I was there to see birds!

Least tern(foreground)

 

               Laughing gull  in breeding plumage (background)

Molly didn't care much for the exercise.  Nor did she have interest in sitting around on hot sand while I snapped endless pictures of birds. It's tricky to argue--on the one hand, she really needed the exercise; on the other hand, I would have had a lot more fun without her. But I set a timer to get us back in under an hour, so, too soon, we had to turn back.

I was delayed on the way by a couple of people in a small SUV who wanted to know if the road they were on led to the beach. What could I say?  Yes, it led to the beach--but it went through a puddle of indeterminate depth and unknown consistency of bottom, and then it went through deep, soft sand. I strongly advised them against it.

Oddly enough, there was a short power glitch during the night--I only knew because the microwave oven clock had reset. But the refrigerator was cooling again! The thermometer read about 42 when I got up. So it was very possible that the AC power reset had "fixed" it. We'd tried switching to LP gas and back to AC but that hadn't made a difference. But we hadn't tried powering it down completely.

When I returned from my walk, Ed was almost finished hooking up. In fact, he was closer to finished than I'd expected and I actually held him up by fifteen minutes or so by going into the office to look at the exhibits. We headed out, happy that we might expect cool drinks in the fridge when we arrived.

The plan was to stop somewhere on the way and fill up the gas tank, so as not to have to stop again on the day we went home. We found a little truck stop in Brenham but, sadly, the gas pump we chose to use was operating very, very slowly. We pumped and waited and waited and pumped, and after ten minutes had added only nine gallons. I suggested we give up at ten gallons, and Ed agreed. We ended up with the fuel tank a little over half full.

When Ed went inside to pay, the lady said she'd just been about to come outside and suggest that he move to a different pump. That was very decent of her, but it's not so easy moving a 32-foot RV with a tow dolly attached. It's not like we could simply back up and scoot over.

Note for future: there aren't many truck stops on the 290 loop around Brenham, Texas. At least not on the westward loop.

We arrived at 3:16. I expected Edward and Bob to have showed up already, but no one was there. We'd finished hookups at 4:02 and were just hanging out when people started arriving.

Bob and Theresa have gotten themselves a lovely little Casita, which is basically a bedroom on wheels. But somehow the designers engineered a mini-kitchen, a bathroom, and a shower in there. It's so small you can take it almost anywhere--it's like tent camping without the work. Cool.

The campground was full and became more so as the evening wore on. As to be expected on a Friday in August.

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.

Mammoth at Matagorda, Wednesday

(August 12)

 

 

Molly discovered that when we walk close to the edge of the mowed grass, near the sunflowers and other scrubby brush, sometimes a rodent will get flustered and scurry around. Very exciting! Lucky for me, she never got ahold of one.

In the morning Ed went surf fishing and I tagged along to spy on birds. We took Zack in our little wagon, and while it wasn't exactly easy pulling the thing though loose sand, it allowed us to carry a cooler of water, Ed's tackle, my backpack and our short-legged though stout-hearted doggy.

This time there were indeed Ruddy Turnstone to observe--they stayed more away from the water's edge and didn't mind hanging out for a photo op. Also a few Willet.

 

 

 Ruddy Turnstone

 

In the afternoon we went to the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge. It was marvelous! And to think we almost missed it--the web site didn't tell us exactly how to go in, so we turned in the first entrance that had official-looking buildings. No maps or permit stations were posted, so we wandered around the small parking lot feeling helpless. Just as we were pulling away, a nice employee came over and told us that we wanted the second turn on the left, not this one.

So that brought us to the 9-mile auto tour. Not a circle, as I'd expected, but an out-and-back road that had a loop to the right and one to the left. We went left first, to Moccasin Pond. (I think that was the name) After a short drive alongside a stream, me thinking every minute that this was it--that's all there was going to be, we came to the pond! Open water was crammed with green muck but full of birds. There was a raised platform there to give you a better look--but we had to be careful--it was showing its age. And probably a hurricane or two passed through since it was built.

 It's there I got this photo of Ibis, species unknown but probably Glossy Ibis

 

 There were black-necked Stilt [stilt] there, too,

 

and egrets:

snowy egret.

 

 

 

 

 

 Common Moorhen and Barn Swallow.. And this very peculiar bird, lurking in the water at our feet:

We were joined by a man and woman there so we all put on our masks. Silly, isn't it--no cars anywhere for further than the eye could see; nothing but nature, birds and buzzing insects; and we meet another pair of humans. They were nice, though. The said they'd tried to take the Bobcat Loop hike on the right-hand turn of the road, but been turned back by all the spiders (Shudder).

After admiring the gator and helping us look for other ones, (if there were any, they were so motionless that we never saw them) they went on. Shortly thereafter, we did too. We met up with them again at the end of the road, where a small river crossed over. It's called Cedar Lake Creek and there's a short trail there, but we didn't see it. On the boat dock someone had set out a couple of crab traps and one of them had a crab.

On the way back, even though time was running out and the refuge closed at 4:30 or 5:00, we turned aside to look at the Bobcat Loop. I was curious to see all the scary spiders that daunted a supposedly normal pair of tourists. The trail was an extremely nice boardwalk in very good condition heading off through a swampy meadow. I looked to be an easy, pleasant hike...but time was getting on and the day was extremely hot. So we just walked a little ways and turned back.

The spiders? I dunno. There were a good number of friendly little "grass" spiders of the sort we have all around our house and hard.  But Shelob had left the building. The ones remaining certainly didn't seem capable of nabbing a dozen dwarfs and stringing them up in webby cocoons, let alone waylaying a pair of mortal men and women.

It was about an hour drive back to the campground. Since the dogs didn't get to have any fun at the Wildlife preserve, I took Molly for a walk down to the beach via the "scenic route." Even though our RV park doesn't have a view of the ocean, there is a road going north along the shore and along it a line of expensive ocean view houses. I can't even imagine paying the flood insurance on one of those.

 I kept intending to drive out just to take a look at them, but that never happened. Instead, Molly and I took a road that we thought was going to lead to them but it soon disappeared into two narrow tire tracks through scrubby grasses. And there lived the motherlode of all mosquitoes. One minute I was trekking along happily, looking for birds--next minute I was dancing and slapping and jitterbugging in place. I'd feel a mosquito biting, slap her, and see on my leg a dozen more than I hadn't even felt. We were running by the time we hit the hot sand and left their winged world.

Safe back in sand and surf, we wandered south to the raised walkway and passed under it, coming out at a section of waterfront where huge granite boulders broke the surf in spatters. We climbed up on one, but when the next wave hit and splashed Molly in the face, she spooked and tried to move too quickly on the slippery surface. Her back end went down in a crack between two boulders and her front end couldn't pull the back end up.

I had hold of her by the harness, and was just about ready to heave her out when she got enough traction to scramble up.

Away from the rocks were some pools of water with marsh grasses growing around them, and the Fish and Wildlife service had put up a short, orange plastic barrier with signs asking people to stay out--crucial bird nesting habitat.  The barrier wasn't in good repair but I hope the reminder was enough to warn people away--there was a bucketload of birds in the pools. I stood and stared until it was starting to get dark and Molly was completely disgusted with me. She sees big birds on the ground and she really, really wants to chase them. And I wouldn't let her!  I'm such a spoil-sport!

Mammoth at the Ocean, Tuesday

(August 11)

So many birds. So not enough time and energy...or time to write!

On Tuesday--our first day--I got up at seven or so, about the time when the sun started showing over the sand dunes to the northeast. The Colorado River goes almost due north, so the ocean is to the South, but we're facing west so it feels all wackydoodle. I guess that's because on my mental map the Colorado flows west to east, which would make our campsite face south. But it doesn't.

So we took the dogs on a little stroll and then I made breakfast. Then we tried to take the car down the road toward the nearby beach area (not on the ocean, on the river), and immediately got stuck in the sand. Luckily Ed was able to push my little Mazda 3 out.

After that we stayed sensibly on the pavement. Over at the beach parking area--on the pavement--it was still an awful long way to the beach, or so it seemed at the speed of Zack. A few days later I went without Zack, and it was still a long way.

There were many of these little birds, which by behavior are surely Sanderlings. The day before on my walk with dogs, I was amost completely sure I was seeing Ruddy Turnstones--"the bird that looks like a calico cat."  But these were different, and Sanderlings obsessively chase the waves' edge just like these did.

 

 

 So, Sanderling.

We puttered around on the beach for a while, then went back. Ed considered fishing but finally suggested that we go driving out to investigate some of the nature places I'd wanted to see. It was really too late in the day for that--everything was over an hour away and I didn't just want to "see" them, I wanted to stop the car and walk all the little boardwalks and hang out at the bird blinds.

So we compromised on going to Quintana Beach to check out the campsites there. I'd heard it was a pretty good place to RV camp. The drive was boring, on narrow but very straight little roads that cut through farmland. Not boring in a bad way, but not like the scenic drive I was expecting.

Quintana Beach is, of course, not all that near the beach. The walk to the beach was about the same as that at our campground...maybe a quarter mile? Google maps shows 500-1000'.  Through soft sand, of course. The park was pretty clean and the buildings were kept up, but there was little vegetation and no trees to speak of, and there would be nothing to look at except your neighbor campers. So our conclusion was, almost certainly not.

As we were coming back down the road to our home base, I noticed something off to the left perched at the top of a few scrubby trees--Crested Caracara. Molly and I returned to take a closer look at them, but we couldn't get any closer than this:

The side of the road they were on had a long, narrow canal blocking me from walking over. When I tried going into a convenient "ice house" parking lot and then cutting across country on a little dirt road, I soon came to a barbed wire fence in very good repair.  I could have gotten through but it would have been a real pain in the neck. Not to mention my jeans, teeshirt, and skin.

 

 

So Molly and I went back to camp, hung around and ate supper, watching boats go up and down the channel. And birds, of course.              Killdeer->

Mammoth goes to the ocean (or at least the Lower Colorado River)

 

Matagorda Bay Nature Park August 10 - 14, then
Yegua Creek Park at Lake Somerville August 14-17

1. Planned distance: 361 miles then 136 miles then 236
2. Map time estimate: 6:03, 2:35, 3:56
3. Adjusted estimate: didn't calculate
4. Actual distance: forgot to check
5. Actual time:  7:32
6. On way out, slowdown on 380, then two Buc'ees stops and a Shell station refill. On way back, 10-15 minutes gas stop at Buffalo, TX.
7. Average mph trip: unknown

Our very weird route: South on I-45 to Buc'ees at Madison. Then 190 West, but first we  shopped at a Shell station just north of the 290 intersection. 90 South to Navasoto; 6 to Hempstead; 159 to Bellville; 60 to Matagorda; 2031 to the park.

This was kind of an experiment, travel-wise, to see how we did with a 6-hour Google maps drive. Was this the longest we'd ever undertaken at once? Actually, no. When we returned from Sea Rim State Park we did a 5:56 hour Google drive in 6:40. So the lesson learned is that I should typically add about 30 minutes to every six hours estimated by Google Maps.

It turned out to be an okay trip, but I did mess up a little and force us to make an unplanned U-Turn. Here's what happened.

We departed at 9:18. It was sunny and hotter than heck.

We got through Dallas with remarkable speed. Not even a traffic backup! But after getting on I-45, going down the road going at Interstate highway speeds, we suddenly heard a whop-whop-whop coming from outside the driver's side of the vehicle. Ed stopped on the shoulder and found that the rubber seal around the windshield was loose. It appeared to have stretched, and was bulging out in two or three places. Thank heavens the ends were still attached.

It wasn't a super big emergency, but Ed got the idea of trying a little superglue on it. We'd been seeing signs for a Buc'ees coming up in ten minutes, so we went on to there. Parking in an empty area of the lot, we got out the ladder and tried to superglue the rubber seal.  It didn't work very well.

But after we got back on the highway, the whopping noise did not resume. Maybe the superglue caught in a few places, or maybe the wind shifted.

Our planned mid-route gas stop was at Buc'ees in Madisonville, the location where we were going to leave I-45 and go off down back roads to avoid Houston. With all the Covid-19 in Harris County, I had no desire to go anywhere near it, and definitely not into Houston.

But when we got to the Buc'ees in Madisonville, it was about 1:30 in the afternoon and the place looked like Times Square on a New Years Eve. The double pump stations, for cars, were mostly full, and the bigger ones for RVs were full too--of cars. Ed circled the pumps and decided he didn't want to wait. Best I could figure, people stopped to get gas and then left their cars at the pump while they shopped and dined inside.

We should have waited it out. But instead we drove away, with me frantically searching for other gas stations in Madisonville that were big-rig friendly and on our route. All my search activity caused my navigation to crater, and if I hadn't written down the route beforehand we would have had to pull off the road and stop. Which would have been smarter, because I got us going down a county road to nowhere and we had to make a U-turn. Not easy.

But after that, things smoothed out and we had a decently boring drive. We barely squeezed in to the RV park before their five o'clock office closing time, but that didn't matter. Since our spot was reserved and paid for in advance, it would be held for us.

As you can see here, the park was crowded. But it was definitely not full--they should lower their rates. Everyone there was affluent enough to afford a higher rate, or at least rich enough to afford one of these big-box clones:


 

I took the dogs for a walk along the Colorado River. It's pretty much deserted on the opposite side, and really very nice down here.

You can't see the ocean from our campsite but it's not far away--you can tell by all the cool birds cruising up and down the river.
Brown Pelican

 Laughing Gull

 Caspian Tern

Our site was right at a fishing pier which was lighted at night. All night long, two green lights were shining on the water and fish were jumping up to snap at bugs. If you went out there and stared straight down, you could see fishy shapes--it was the coolest thing. The fishermen all cleared out at about 10:30 and I tried to get Ed to walk out and look, but he skipped it. (Big mistake, it turned out--on all the other nights of our stay, there were people fishing way into the night.)

There were, of course, tons of lights at the RV park. But when I walked down the sidewalk along the Colorado River to the South, and I held up my arms to cup around my face, I could see Scorpio. The whole shebang, tail and all. And even with scattered clouds, the Milky Way was visible. Awww.

Needless to say, bedtime was late that night.

So light a fluff

 Anna and the French Kiss

by Stephanie Perkins

A YA E-book that I got from the library because I was bored and a little depressed. I wanted to read something that was light, breezy, and sure not to touch any deep chords. This filled the bill admirably.

As a teenager I would have loved this, so I recommend it to that target audience. Anna is smart and introspective and totally obsessed with boys, or at least one boy. Love and sexual attraction are the same thing, which is usual in kids that age. After all, they're not thinking of spending the rest of their lives together or raising kids together--too soon for all that. Which is why I enjoyed it, as I said. No depth at all--like a prime-time sitcom.

Couple of non-finishers...for future reference

 Murder, Curlers, and Kegs

by Arlene McFarlane

I was thinking this was a different book in the series, but no matter. AFter two chapters of this "mini-mystery" I quit. And shan't be trying the others. It's too full of goofy characters and it's straining to be hilarious. Not funny; not interesting.
\

Underland
A Deep Time Journey
by Robert Macfarlane

This book is awesome. Yet I'm giving up on reading it, for now. I might pick it up again in the deep of winter when there are many more hours in the long nights. Here's a short passage of what I read,

Much of Paris was built from its own underland, hewn block by block from the bedrock and hauled up for dressing and placing. Underground stone-quarrying began in earnest towards the end of the twelfth century, and Prisian limestone grew in demand not just locally but across France. ...
The residue of over 600 years of quarrying is that beneath the south of the upper city exists its negative image: a network of more than 200 miles of galleries, rooms and chambers, organized into three main regions that together spread beneath nine arrondissements. This network is the vides de carrieres--the 'quarry voids', the catacombs.

Cool, huh? This book is packed full of so much cool stuff that it hurts your head to read it. It needs to be savored slowly, and I'm embarrassed to admit I ran out of steam power to handle it.