Goose Island

Wow! It was a long and loud night. Wind came up. And up. And up. By midnight, it was shaking the whole rig. There was lots of noise. It sounded like branches scraping the roof. We're not parked next to a tree. Vents flapped. Awning straps slapped. The wind blew all the water out of the bay. By daylight it was calm. That's no way to leave, after a rough night like that. We signed up for another day. New oyster beds to see. Birds discovering the uncovered oyster beds to watch.

I dried my hair without any electrical incidents. I made sure there was no electric heater or coffee maker running at the time.

Last night we watched a car drive through the moon. Late at night, eleven. The waxing moon set, through the binoculars, an orange crescent going silently flat on the bottom. Then, suddenly appearing again! It was setting directly behind the Copano Bay Bridge. Just then, a car drove past, clearly visible in the darkness, back lit entirely by the light of the moon. Wow. I wonder if the people in the car felt it?

Decided we needed another Port Aransas day. Drove there. Crossed the ferry. Shopped. Did the bird lagoon. Had lunch on the beach next to the jetty. Checked out a few more things. Drove home. Got home just in time for another great sunset.

It was a good moorhen day. Saw several. Saw a moorhen chase a coot. Saw another rail. Saw another ruby crowned kinglet. Tiny little thing. About the size of a hummingbird. Ducks, mergansers, loons, grebes. You know. Took a little side trip to a good ducking spot. Spotted a few. Then found Judy's swan again. The swan that's not supposed to be here. When I could finally get Judy's attention diverted from the swan, we checked out some ducks I couldn't recognize. They looked a lot like a duck we've never seen before: the American Black Duck. They're not normally around here so there wasn't much chance, but, That's it! They match exactly. American Black Ducks. Gottum.

Checked out a little park on the way back. It's called Lighthouse Lakes Trails Park. Sounds good. It is a low-lying saltwater marsh, honeycombed by marked trails, with a lighthouse on the other side. The Lydia Ann. We always look for it. You can see the lighthouse off in the distance from the road. We've seen it from up close on the water in the sailboat one year when we sailed out to Port Aransas from Corpus Christie. You can put your kayak in the water at this park, and paddle all the way over to the Lydia Ann and back in sheltered water. That's a good thing.. You don't have to worry about the headwind coming up after you have crossed the bay. It will always be a reasonable paddle back in relatively calm water. We'll have to remember that spot for next year.

We're not stopping in Glenwood Springs on the way home. The office picked up another out of town job while we've been gone. The new client in Glenwood Springs wants it done right away, so I tried to set it up for next Monday and Tuesday so we could catch it on the way home. They want it done soon, but not that soon. When we go home, we'll just go home.

The TV remote puzzles us. Not because we can't program it. No surprise there. What puzzles us is that when you push the button to turn the television off, the television goes off. Then it blinks back on. You blink it off again. It goes off. But it blinks back on. Again. And again. Persistence always pays. It will turn off and stay off. Eventually. A trick TV remote? A party gag?

I want to talk about the north star, and the ferry current, and two bathrooms, and the water/fuel separator, and full-timers, and kayaking in the wind, and going room-to-room, and the other kayak fisherman, and the two switches, and Cut and Shoot Texas, and Luling Texas, and traffic light triggers, and cold hands, and banking on the road, and the walk-in clinic, and gas pump shutoffs, and candy canes, and the retractable extra axle, and truck cabs. But I'm running out of time. Maybe while I'm driving home, nothing new will happen and I can write each evening about the rest of this stuff. Maybe.

I know! Another trip. I can spend my time on the next trip asking the questions I didn't get to on this trip. But then.... Oh well.