Some recent Photos

Here are some pictures from the past couple of days....

Seashells from the sea shore at Sea Rim State Park

Nancy and I in the gale force winds at Sea Rim

 

Here we are at New Orleans

Flat Kara at Café Du Monde

This was her brunch on Monday

The French Quarter

 

Bill, Flat Kara, Cindy and Nancy at St Louis Cathedral

Pope John visited in 1967 and Pope John Paul in the 1980's!! This is a beautiful church.

 

 

 

Now in NOLA

We left Sea Rim State Park in a gale! We were getting forty mile an hour winds for two days and they were calling for severe thunderstorms Sunday and Monday nights. That was all the incentive we needed for leaving a day early. We pulled into Pontchatrain Landing RV Park and met up with our Wheeler Road neighbors the Hollenbecks. The winds were much lighter off of the coast, and the day was not bad at all. Today we rode the shuttle from the park to downtown New Orleans and spent the day walking the French Quarter and taking in the sights and sound of the city. This is an awesome town for the food, the music, and the old architecture and people watching. We walked the farmers market area, Bourbon street, a lot of the classic French Quarter streets and the river front near downtown. We started the day with coffee and Bignettes at Café Du Monte, then we had mouflettas for lunch. Later for a mid day snack it was crab cakes and oysters. Later we had dinner at Tableau Restaurant and enjoyed our meal on the balcony overlooking Jackson Square. What a great day in a great town!

Now at Sea Rim State Park

We left Galveston Island after a nice week there. Earlier in the week we had a viscous thunderstorm but we survived unscathed except for a lost night's sleep.
We enjoyed the Island and met some new friends while there. We were adopted by Frank and Carol Bowser, who live on the Island and volunteer at the park. They took us to dinner, had us over to their house, and Frank took us kayaking on the bay. We enjoyed their company and learned a lot about the area from them. They are former Michiganians and that must be why they took us in. We also met a couple from Wisconson and shared two campfires with them. We compared camping agendas with them and we stayed at a lot of the same camps. They have done a lot of long term camping including British Columbia, Nova Scotia and three trips to Alaska!
We hade a lot of beach time at Galveston and I got some surf fishing in, but caught only catfish and croakers. Nothing to keep.
We are now west of Galveston after taking the ferry to Bolivar Island and then east to Port Arthur. This area is huge oil refinery country but we are on a secluded Gulf shore beach that is pretty nice. We have two days to explore the area.
By the way, the duck in the last post was a black bellied whistling duck.

Here we are with the camper on the Galveston Ferry

A shrimping boat in Galveston Bay, We saw them from our beach in the gulf every night.

American Avocets at Sea Rim Park. Note the long slender upturned bills.

Black neck stilts. Why would they call them stilts?

Enjoying our time at Galveston

We've been sightseeing and exploring around town and the east end of the Island. There are neighborhoods with beautiful old colonial homes and churches that have been here since the hurricane of 1900. We visited the east tip of the Island where there used to be a fort before the 1900 hurricane leveled it. Since that big hurricane a huge seawall has been built to shelter the east end of the Island and the town of Galveston. The main ease/west road along the gulf is built on this seawall and this is the highest land on the Island.
We visited a seafood retail shop on the harbor and watched them unloading fish from the fishing boats. Tables were heaped with fish and shrimp and you picked out what you wanted and they fileted it for you and packed it on ice for the trip home. We bought some fresh flounder and grouper for a few fish dinners.
Today our new friend Frank Bowser took us on a kayak trip through the bay. He is a volunteer with the park and had access to the kayak shed. We each had our own kayak and went for a four hour paddle through the marshes and bays to see the nesting shorebirds. We saw laughing gulls, great egrets, oyster catchers and black skimmers. Quite an interesting wildlife sanctuary here.

The eastern tip of Galveston Island. The shipping channel comes along here carrying ships from the Gulf to Galveston Harbor. Cruise ships also enter here during the high season.

Fresh from the boats, fish at Katie's Seafood Shop.

Kayaking on Galveston Bay.

This is the Oyster Catcher. Note the strong beak for prying open the shells.

Pelicans on the posts of an old viewing platform destroyed by hurricane Ike.

Another duck I have to look up. Any ideas?

By the way, the black and white shorebird in the previous post is a Black Bellied Plover.

Galveston Island

We are at Galveston Island State Park for a week! We have a good campsite just a sand dune away from the Gulf beaches and life is good! We have been exploring the park quite a bit on our bikes, it is three miles wide and about two mile long. It has a campground on the gulf side and another on the bay side. Galveston bay is huge and  there is an intercostal waterway on the bay side that big barges travel delivering goods to Houston and Brownsville. We had dinner with one of the park volunteers and his wife yesterday. They took us through Galveston and then on the ferry to Bolivar, Texas,  just east of Galveston Island. We had a great shrimp dinner on the water and had a beautiful sunset.
We want to do a lot of exploring in the town of Galveston as it has a lot of history and colonial homes and businesses.
Today there was a huge 55 mile bicycle road race on the island with thousands of participants and we stayed off the roads since they were busy with racers. Tomorrow we will get into town and see the sights.

We are camped at Jamaica Beach which is about two thirds of the way west on Galveston Island.

Sunset on the bay side of the island

The beach on the gulf side.

They have a beehive to view in the visitor center. I thought of Tom when I saw this.

Galveston Island summer houses. The homes are a bit on the big side and they all look massive since they are on stilts to ward off storm surges.

Flat Kara on the Park sign

The car ferry from Galveston's east end

Walking the gulf beach this morning

We were trying to pick out a beach house for next time

Maybe this one?

A new shore bird to look up.

Flat Kara fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately she caught nothing but a catfish.

Enjoying Goose Island

We've been at the park for three days and the time is flying by. We have been relaxing and enjoying the coast here. I've been doing quite a bit of pier fishing with our neighbors from Fort Worth. They are here for a week long fishing vacation and Mike has been coaching me on saltwater fishing. I have caught quite a few sea trout, but I'm just not getting the big enough trout to keep. Fortunately, Mike caught a couple in excess of twenty inches and we had a fish fry with them yesterday.
Nancy and I have been bike riding every day and we have done some exploring around Rockport and Fulton Beach. This is quite a nice area on the gulf and quite a bit of fishing goes on here. Next time Nancy and I come to Texas in the wintertime we have made a vow to explore this coastline from Galveston to Brownsville in more detail.
Tomorrow we move to Galveston Island and will be seeing that area for the first time. We are hearing good things about it, although Hurricane Ike came through here a few years ago and did some more damage. We are anxious to see everything.

Back on the Grid!

We have been on North Padre Island for the past four days and far from any WI FI or phone connectivity. We did drive in towards town on Sunday to call Hannah and wish her a happy seventh birthday, but even then I couldn't get a WI FI signal.
Padre Island National Seashore is an awesome barrier Island park. It stretches for 60 miles southward towards South Padre and Brownsville, Texas. When you arrive at the park you can drive in about five miles to the campground on the Gulf beach, then the pavement ends and for the next fifty five miles the only access is to drive on the beach! Lots of people venture south along the Island, but you have to be watchful of the high tides and waves in high winds because the beach can get narrow and sometimes impassible. Camping on the undeveloped beach is free for the adventurous. We stayed in the campground, and roughed it with now water or electricity, but we did have flush toilets nad cold showers. The back of the camper faced right out at the Gulf of Mexico!
This morning we broke camp and moved north east to Goose Island. Here we are on the bay side of the barrier Islands, but the bay is wide and quite expansive. Here there are oyster beds, a pier, and lots of shallow waters for surf fishing. We were at this park four years ago, but we stayed in the inland campground. This time we are right on the bay and back right up to the water. We have four nights here and time to catch up on laundry, groceries, do some bike riding and maybe some fishing, too!
The weather has turned really nice again after a lot of wind and cooler temperatures (low seventies). It is now close to eighty and beautiful blue skies.
We worry that the end of April is approaching so fast!!

The beach at Padre Island. Our campground was just above the dune and we could watch the waves from our back window.

Me and flat Kara beaching at Padre!

Laughing gulls with their black hoods

Flat Kara at the entrance to Padre Island National Seashore. I don't know who that is holding her up?

This is the boat ramp on the bay side of Padre Island. We rode our bikes over on Sunday morning and the parking lot was full of empty boat trailers.

From the other side of the posts the beach road goes south for fifty five miles of wilderness. This is the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the entire world!

Another beautiful North Padre morning.

Here we are at Goose Island State Park. The bayside campgrounds are right at the waters edge.

Nancy walking on an oyster bar.

Some fishermen returned from their outing with a cooler full of fish.