S. and I were sitting at he kitchen table at the farm in the midst of an unusual spring cold snap (that’s what they call them in the country) and she said, “wouldn’t it be nice to take a few days off and do something out of the ordinary”. These words to my ears were like catnip to a cat. I immediately ran through several really outrageous ideas before I hit upon a semi-reasonable, semi-likely to get agreement on idea of a few days on the gulf coast of Texas. When she retorted with the not surprising query of “what in the #@*# will we do there”, I was ready. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps we could check out the antique shops and art galleries.” It’s not for nothing that I’ve been married for forty-three years. “And if we have a little extra time we might take a look at one of the coastal wildlife refuges.” See how cleverly I slipped that in. She didn’t say no, so I quickly set about seeing what I could get set up on short notice.
My initial thought is that we’d do something we’d not done for a long, long time…..A ROADTRIP. Further research banked the fires of my roadtrip ardor when I discovered that a) the Texas gulf coast covers a lot of territory, and b) all of it is a long ways away by car. I didn’t think that S. and I would survive ten hours in my Tahoe arguing over what road to turn on next and which fast food joint to stop at.
Having come to my senses, I decided on a SWA flight to Corpus Christi and a short drive to Rockport and the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Google led me to Capt. Tommy Moore, the don of birdwatching in the environs of Rockport. Captain Tommy, as it turned out was quite the character. To his credit he quickly sussed out that S. and I weren’t going to be in the normal run of his birder tour groupies. We wanted a hotel suite for our stay in Rockport and a private boat with guide for our foray into the wilds of Aransas Bay. To that we added a requirement for catered lunches and a private guide for our tour of the Fennessey Ranch (another birding hot spot). He started seeing visions of $$$$ signs and gave us his best. He put together an itinerary that I could only disclose to S. in small doses. A full day birding and fishing trip on Aransas Bay with Rhett Price and his 23’ open fishing skiff, a half day group birding trip with Capt. Tommy on his shallow draft boat the Skimmer followed by a forty-five minute drive to the Fennessey Ranch where we would be guided by Nan and Lyndon for a birding tour of the ranch of indeterminate length. You can see why it wasn’t a good idea to roll this all out to S. at one time.
The flight to CC was uneventful and blessedly short, and I successfully bargained for an upgrade with Hertz. Except for some really bad gumbo and fried shrimp (never eat at a restaurant named Joe’s) we set out for the short drive along the coast to Rockport. We found the Lighthouse Inn, the top dog of the hotel trade around here, and entered the somewhat schmaltzy lobby. Let your imagination run free on what you might find in the way of interior decorating for a hotel in the shape of a fake lighthouse. While I was looking for the valet parker and baggage handler, the hulking girl behind the deck shoved a luggage trolley at me and said ominously, “get this back here real quick; we might have a rush later.”
Our “suite” was the farthest from the lobby of any of the sixty-four rooms and took approximately twelve minutes to walk to, if the elevator wasn’t otherwise occupied. It met the technical definition of a suite (bedroom and separate sitting room), but the total square footage was about the same as the Mercury Grand Marquis that Hertz had foisted on me. It had a deck the size of a Fed Ex envelope which provided a partial view and full smell of the commercial fishing docks adjacent. Not bad for $175.00. After a scouting drive around the area, we partook of the free peanuts and cheap drinks in the bar….which was quite lively hosting most of the traveling drummers in the area. We’d inquired after the “best” restaurant in the area and wound up at Hemingways which wasn’t too bad. We arrived at 6:30 and found a ersatz mahogany dining room half full of non-descript tourists. The place was pretty well cleared out by 7:15. They must start early in these parts.
The next morning, after a short drive through ominous fog and drizzle, we arrived at Pelican Point public boat ramp which was populated by groups of guys huddled around their boats quaffing a morning brew. I almost lost S. when she saw the open skiff that Rhett already had in the water. But she’s a gamer, and we boarded with some trepidation about the weather but more about the lack of a WC. Rhett looked like a healthy 35-40 and seemed to know his business. He’d been fishing and guiding in the area for eleven years having arrived here from Kansas or somesuch. He said that Capt. Tommy had picked him for us because he “knew something about birds” and I suspect, because he was willing to take us. He and S. hit it off well spending much of the trip discussing the perils of raising teenagers in the internet world. We’d been out less than thirty minutes when Rhett put the brakes on and pointed to some white flecks on the horizon. “Whoopers” he intoned. I spent several minutes trying to adjust my binoculars while he continued to approach the shoreline a hundred yards or so from the birds. For those of you who don’t know, Whooping Cranes, the largest of the worlds shore birds, had dwindled to defacto extinction in the mid 80’s. Through careful conservation practices and committed conservationists, both public and private, the flock had been nurtured back to a population of 500 or so. What we were seeing were the remaining few of the whoopers that had not yet left for their long migration to Canada. During the course of our visit I saw seventeen of these still endangered birds, many of which were “on the wing”, beginning their annual journey to their northern breeding grounds. Think of it. I saw over 3% of the entire species. Applied to human beings, I would have to see 3.4% of 6.5 billion or 221,000.000 peeps. Or about as many as I saw on my way from the airport to my hotel in New Delhi.
Everything was downhill after spotting the whoopers. I saw, but couldn’t identify about another 15-20 species and identified and took pictures of 5-10 species. My interest in adding to my birders “life list” waned as the pressure on my bladder increased. This particular crisis was abated by sneaking a few moments in the stern pretending to search the sky for more whoopers with my pants unzipped. We fished for a perfunctory twenty minutes or so and then headed for port to let S. have her head in browsing the cutsy shops of the historic downtown Rockport. A short day and easy money for Rhett and another smart decision for me.
As one can only digest so much of this drama at a sitting, I’ve made the editorial decision to write this in two parts. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of “The Great Spring Break Road Trip”.
More later.
