Another Cloudy Day

This morning was 47F and cloudy again. Gordon joined me on my walk so we walked toward the Lone Star dead end. He walked as far as the horses and took pictures while I continued. The only photo I took today was of a cardinal in a tree just outside the park which you will see here. Yesterday when we were out we got him a pedometer too. By the way, last week I averaged 9540 steps per day. They recommend that you keep track by week rather than by day. So I think I did pretty well.

There was a garage sale in the park today to benefit cancer. I had donated my old dishes. It seemed like it was well attended.

I started to read this morning laying on the couch and fell asleep early this afternoon and slept all afternoon. Neither of us slept very well last night so I was really tired. When I got up we both went for a walk around the park.

Not much happened today! For some reason it felt like Sunday to both of us.

A Very Gray Day!

This morning was only 56F (13C) and our high only got to 59F (15C). It was very cloudy all day. I had my morning walk around the neighborhood out Lone Star and south on Tenth and back. I sure miss the scenic walks I had at Goose Island and Mustang Island State Parks. Also Port Aransas was pretty scenic.

I’m running out of room on my hard drive on my computer. I still have the photos that I took at the beginning of our RV Odyssey on it so today we went in search of an external hard drive. Gordon has been backing up my photos on DVD but they aren’t easily accessible for me. We wound up at Radio Shack in Aransas Pass where I got a 200 GB for $99.99. Amazing! I remember when I got my first computer, a little Mac SE. I got a 80 MB hard drive when I went to visit Gordon in Dayton for $600+ U.S. and that was a good deal. This would have been in 1989. Now I have to get the files transferred.

So while we were in a spending mood, I also got a back up photo card for my camera and a card reader. Toys, toys, toys!

On our way back we stopped at Palm Harbor RV Park and Ancient Oaks campground (a former KOA) and had a look around. We’ve gotten spoiled here the sites are so large. Palm Harbor was dumpy but was right on the water. Ancient Oaks was better but not up to the standards that we have here for less money. They do have a pool and a hot tub that we don’t have here (but we don’t usually use them anyway) and it’s closer to the water but not that much closer.

Then we stopped at downtown Rockport and walked around a bit and I made a hair appointment for Monday.

Also today we made an appointment at Camping Clinic to take the RV in for the new microwave next Thursday and a truck appointment for its service for next Friday. Whew! Too busy!

Black-Bellied Whistling Duck we saw at Ancient Oaks RV Park pond

Colorful rocking chairs in front of a store in downtown Rockport

Housework

Just for comparison, here's the stamp that I refer to at the end of this blog.

It was 64F (18C) and cloudy this morning for my walk around the neighboring streets. We had some glimpses of sun during the day but they were few.

This morning I got the vacuuming done and the floors washed and prepared the laundry to get that taken care of. After showers and lunch, I got the laundry done.

As I didn’t have my 10,000 steps yesterday due to our cruise, I decided to go for another walk late this afternoon as the sun had come out and it was beautiful. We reached a high today of 73F (23C) although it was fairly humid compared to what we’ve had for a long while.

I didn’t take any photos today so I’m borrowing one of the flying whooping cranes that Gordon took yesterday. It’s such a beautiful photo! This particular photo reminds me a lot of a stamp that my Dad had. I think it was a 5 cent. He had cancellations of the stamp from every post office in Canada at the time and I remember that he sold the album (I think in 1968) and took a trip to England.

Whooping Crane Tour

Last night I slept with the window open and no electric heater for the first time in ages! This morning when I woke up it was 58F (14C) and quite foggy but sunny for my walk around the neighborhood area.

Yesterday we had made reservations to go on one of the Whooping Crane Tours out of Fulton. We left Fulton Harbor on The Skimmer under Captain Tommy Moore at 1 p.m. Captain Tommy knows his birds. We saw several families of whooping cranes, saw some flying and then got really close to a couple of young whooping cranes. It was an excellent tour, well worth the money. We were out for 3 ½ hours. We saw lots of birds but most were too far away for my camera.

Gordon and I with the Whooping Cranes in the background

Cormorants drying their wings on the breakwater in the harbor

When we returned to harbor the oyster fishermen had returned and were unloading their catches. Lots and lots of oysters!

It was mostly cloudy for our tour but the sun came out on the way back and made for some nice photos of the fishing fleet.

Some of the fishing fleet

Unloading oysters

More Places to Go

These are the black pigs (javelina??)

Today was a really nice sunny day with no wind and 55F (13C) when I got up this morning. I walked around the area starting out going east on Lone Star for a change. I saw a great egret walking right along the road on Tenth Street and a cardinal in the tree just as I was entering the park.

After breakfast and shower, I headed over to WalMart to pick up a few things then came home for lunch.

This is the part of the sign I wanted

This is the complete sign

After lunch we headed north to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge hoping to spend some time there. We were there two years ago but I had a really bad back then and wasn’t able to walk very far. However, it was not to be. They were doing a prescribed burn so we couldn’t go very far into the park. We stopped to see the alligator behind a fence and then started on a trail but it was very muddy so we came back and drove as far as we could into the park. We took some photos of the burn and then left and headed for Refugio where I wanted to take a photo of a sign I had seen. On the way there we saw all kinds of deer and quite a few sandhill cranes. We took our sign photos, looked around Refugio again, then drove on.

At one spot, we pulled off the road going toward a fishing pier and saw two black wild pigs (could have been hjavelina, hard to tell). We drove back via Bayside and took some photos as we were close to sunset. We did a bit of back and forth from Rockport back to the sunset spot. We got home just at twilight – very tired!

Our high today got to be 72F (22C) and it was sunny and beautiful all day!

Seeing Some of the Area

This morning was nice and sunny and 53F (12C) and I did my usual walk along Lone Star and then around the RV park.

It is so sad to hear that 18 one year old whooping cranes were killed in the tornado that hit Florida last week. All 18 had flown with an ultra light plane from Wisconsin in the Fall. To read the story click here.

Late this morning we went out and stopped at the Chamber of Commerce in Rockport to get information on birding spots. Then we started out for one of them, Aransas Woods. It turned out to be a dud for birds. All we saw was one great egret far in the distance. We did however walk about ½ mile through supposed trails with grass and bushes and wet spots so we didn’t stay long. We then took FM1069 which is the road we sometimes take to Bayside and where we’ve seen sandhill cranes before. The birding hot spots map showed some roads that run off of FM1069 and the first one we took we did see sandhill cranes, but only three of them. We took another road and saw some other birds but most of them too far especially for my camera.

Photo taken at Aransas Woods

On our way back we stopped at Camping Clinic and they received our microwave today but can’t put it in until later this week. He’s supposed to call us.

We took the Beach Road part of the way back and saw lots more birds especially at Little Bay which is within the city limits. We stopped at Fulton Mansion as well which was the home of the man that the town of Fulton (where we are now) is named after but it’s closed on Monday and Tuesday. So our final stop was at a little fruit market along the highway where I got some oranges. Prices of oranges in my opinion is way too high. They are cheaper at home! HEB wanted $1.99/lb for naval oranges last week so I didn’t buy any. The guy at the fruit market told me navals were out of season but there were still a few in the bin so I bought a few and the price was much better. It cost me $1.34 for 4 oranges. Now we’ll see how they taste.

Looks like a bird convention!

Fulton Mansion

Sandra on the grounds of Fulton Mansion - note my new hat

Our high today was 66F (19C) but after a sunny morning and early afternoon it got cloudy during the later afternoon however there was a sunset that Gordon took some photos of at the bridge at Copano Bay.

A Slow Relaxing Sunday

I didn’t feel well during the night so got up and came out to the couch and eventually fell asleep. When I woke up I didn’t feel like walking so stayed on the couch and read, did puzzles, watched TV etc. It was really too bad as today is the nicest day we’ve had for some time. The high reached 65F (18C). Around 3:00 p.m. I decided to go for my walk so I walked to where the pavement ends on Lone Star then came back and walked around the campground and sat for a while on the swing at the pond enjoying the day.

This pond is right across the road from the entrance to our RV park

We went out for sunset tonight and ended up near Bayside as that’s the best place to get a sunset over Copano Bay. Even though it was still 63F (17C), I was glad I had brought my wind jacket as once the sun goes down it turns cold.

Tonight's sunset

We won’t be watching the Super Bowl tonight but I expect there are a lot of people who will!