A Quiet End to 2013

Tuesday, 31 December
Gulf Waters RV Resort — Port Aransas, Texas
Temps: LO 42F (5.5C) / Hi 47F (8C)

So many of you out there are doing year end reviews, which I’m enjoying reading.  I admire you.  Every time I get started, I get bogged down with trying to pick out the highlights of our year on the road — don’t even get me started on doing the same for our vacation off-road.  So I’ll just have to be satisfied with a wrap up of our 13 days since arriving at Gulf Waters on 19 December.

        This female great tailed grackle stopped by our site today to say Happy New Year!

I mentioned in the previous post that we haven’t been doing much.  The culprit partly being the weather.  Most days have been downright gloomy with grey skies, and measurable rain on four of the days — not counting the ones that were drizzly on and off.  We had one day of full sunshine with cold temps; and several days when the sun teased us by peeking through the clouds.  The temperatures ranged between 47-71F
(8-16C) for our highs and 41-61 (5-16C) for our lows — and that’s without the wind chill from the almost constant wind.  The higher end of those temps were few and far between!

The weather doesn’t stop feathered friends, like this GBH, from coming by to visit us.
sorry about the dirty window :-(

Could we have bundled up and gone out to explore the area despite the weather?  Or gone into Corpus Christi to visit some of the indoor attractions?  Yes … on both counts.  But we have so much catching up to do from our vacation that we decided to just sit still and do that for now.  The weather is bound to change, and when it does, we will be sure to take advantage of it.

For a minute I thought this pelican was going to overshoot the pond and land on our roof!

Besides, we will have plenty of time to see what the area has to offer.  We managed to **EXTEND** our stay in Port Aransas/Corpus Christi through the end of April.  We’ll have to make a few interim moves, but we really don’t mind as they will give us a chance to get the wheels rolling briefly for what is going to be our longest stay to date in one area.

These two brown pelicans were in the same spot the next morning;
I wonder if they have to pay a fee to camp overnight like the rest of us!

Our first move will be a very short one — to another site for six more weeks here at the resort when our initial month is up.  That will bring us to the end of February.  Then we’ll move to NAS Corpus Christi for the month of March — unless something opens up here at Gulf Waters … the problem thus far is Spring Break week.  Regardless of where we end up for March, we’ll be back to Gulf Waters RV Resort for April.

On one of the colder evenings, Mui used a Turkish recipe to make a yummy red lentil soup.
Thanks to our Blendtech, the soup had a nice creamy consistency.

Leaving our future plans behind and returning to the here and now.  Whenever the sun deigned to grace us, we took advantage of it to go for walks on the beach.  In our travels, we’ve found some beaches to be more walkable than others.  The beach that fronts the campground here is level, wide, and well-packed without being hard on the feet.

The beach runs 6.3-miles (10 km) along the length of Mustang Island.  On a nice day, that would be a great walk.  For now, though, we’re making do with shorter walks.  Most of the time, I resist the temptation to stop and take photos in order to get the most exercise value from these outings.  On a couple of occasions, however, the temptation proved too much for my trigger [shutter] finger!

“Hmmm, fresh sushi,” says the ring-billed gull, as it …

… picks up the fish to carry it off before one of his friends steals it away.

Sanderling

Willet

The great blue heron keeps an eye on the fisherman … hoping for a free meal perhaps.

Not everything on the beach was pleasant, however.  Two days ago, we came across a dolphin carcass on shore.  So sad.  I took pictures with the intention of sending them to the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network (TMMSN) when we returned to the campground.  As it turns out, we saw a couple standing guard over the dead dolphin on the way back from our walk.  When I asked, they said they had already reported it and were waiting for a removal team from Corpus Christi to arrive.  An article I later read on the topic of these strandings said studies are underway to understand why dead dolphins are washing ashore in recent years; red tide and the BP oil spill have apparently been exonerated.

So sad; even in death, the dolphin looks like it’s smiling.

Don’t want to end on a sad note, so I kept a few of my sunset photos for the end of this post.  We’ve not made it to the beach for sunrise yet.  Frankly, I am waiting for warmer temperatures before I venture out in the wee hours of the morning.  But we have glimpses of colorful sunsets from our site, so we do get to enjoy them without venturing far.

From behind our site …

… from the front of our site.

And so … we’ve eaten our New Year’s Eve tapas and have drunk a toast or two to a great 2013 and a happy, healthy, and travel filled 2014.  Don’t think we’ll make it to midnight to see the ball fall in Times Square, but other places around the world have already rung in the new year … that’s good enough for us.

Happy 2014 and Happy Trails to all.