San Padre Islands

Texas is on the gulf of Mexico. A couple of miles off shore sits the barrier islands which protect the coastal towns from the open water of the gulf. These long narrow islands are called the San Padre Islands. There are only a few places where you can get from the mainland to the San Padres; this is the causeway from Corpus Christi to South San Padre.

Although there are towns and buildings on the islands, most of them are part of the National Park System and are kept natural. The centre of the islands are mostly marshes and grasses with beautiful beaches along the shore lines.

The beaches are very wide and flat and go on for hundreds of miles. The waves are noticeably rougher of the gulf side of the barrier islands than on the protected shoreline of the mainland.

We walked down the beach for a few miles and had it pretty well to ourselves. This was the warmest and least windy day we've seen since early December and the walk was very pleasant.

The beach ends at these big sand dunes which are probably 20 feet high. The great thing about them is they provide great shelter if you've been drinking coffee all morning.

A lot of the beach is not open to cars but miles of driving beaches let you get all the sand and salt you want on your car. The sand is like flour and it was impossible to get in and out of the car without bringing in lots of sand.

A bridge lets you drive from South San Padre to Mustang Island. Driving north on this island takes you to Port Aransas which is the most northerly you can go on the barrier islands. This is a real tourist town with beach wear huts to restaurants. You can rent dune buggies or horses to ride on the beach. I don't know if they give you a shovel as well. This park is the last stop on the island and had lots of hikers and fishermen enjoying the day. We watched dolphins swim by and lots of boats cruising around. A lovely spot.

To get off Mustang Island back to the mainland, you need to take a ferry. Although this channel isn't too wide and a bridge would easily span it, it needs to be open for the oil tankers. Out in the gulf, hundreds of oil rigs are taking out oil which is transferred to oil tankers who take it to shore in Corpus to the refineries there. These tankers are moving through this channel all the time so its easier to use ferries which can stop and let the tankers through. The ferries are free; imagine that in Ontario!

We got the front view on the ferry. Pretty impressive isn't it. The trip only took about 10 minutes and was surprisingly bumpy. I guess with multiple ferries going by the wakes were large enough to rock the boat. Then we're back on the mainland with a 30 minute drive back home. Always wanted to see the San Padres.

King Ranch

About an hours drive south of us is King Ranch, one of the largest ranches in the world at 825,000 acres. It was founded by Captain Richard King in 1853 after he bought 2 Spanish land grants. Besides owning this ranch in Texas, they now own large tracts of land in Florida for growing oranges and in New Mexico for growing pecans. At one time they owned over twice as much land with holdings in Australia, Africa and South America but have sold all those off. They do tours around the ranching areas so we thought we'd give it a go.

He was a river boat captain along the Rio Grande and decided to go into ranching so he rode for days through the desert and decided to start his ranch when he found this river, the first fresh water since he left the  Rio Grande. This bridge was built later for the stagecoach route from Brownsville to Matamoros Mexico.

After the ranch was well established, they built this home. It is 36,000 square feet with 17 bedrooms and 19 bathrooms. Because there wasn't any town nearby, travelers as well as guests could stay here for a night or two. Not much of a picture, but the house is surrounded by trees and you can't get much of a picture.

This is the front entrance, see what I mean. The house is still fully staffed and there are usually some of the 150 family members staying for a few days at any given time. We didn't get an invite in, unfortunately.

When he first started ranching the common cattle was the Texas longhorn. They are quite impressive with over 6 foot horns. They were very rugged and could survive on nothing but they didn't have much meat and didn't sell for much so Captain King started breeding different cattle.

He bred these British shorthorns with Brahma bulls from India and spent years getting the breed ratio right. He ended up with a massive animal that was rugged and put weight on fast. They were registered as Santa Gertrudis, the first new breed of cattle registered in over 100 years. The original sire reached over 2800 pounds. Packing plants started complaining that the animals were getting too large for them to slaughter and handle so King Ranch started a new breeding program and a few years ago came out with another new breed called the Santa Cruz cattle. 

The Santa Cruz is a smaller animal but also has smaller bones and actually has more meat after butchering than the much larger Santa Gertrudis. It matures and has calves in about 18 months, over 6 months sooner than the S.G. which means the herd grows much quicker. These calves are only 6 months old and are about the size of a dairy cow already. The ranch has over 50,000 cattle and constantly ship hundreds a day to market.

The ranch is divided into hundreds of fields and pastures so they developed an automatic cattle gate so time wouldn't be wasted opening and closing gates. The vehicle bumps the swinging gate and drives through before it swings closed. As the gate opens, the chain twists around the centre pole and untwists to close the gate. There is a knack to it though; hit it too hard and it slaps you on the ass, too light and it scrapes the side.

When Captain King needed horses to work the ranch, he went down to Mexico and bought hundreds of horses. At one town where he stopped he realized that it was very poor and if he bought all their horses they would be destitute. He invited the whole town to move to his ranch where he would give them work, shelter, food and medical. The whole town packed up everything they owned and moved to his ranch. He now had hundreds of cowboys and horses to work his ranch. The descendants of the original Mexicans still work on the ranch. This retired Mexican cowboy told of his life on the ranch. He is a great great grandson of one of the original Mexicans and his boys are now working there. They get free housing, free schooling, free medical and a job for life. Not a bad arrangement.

 The size of the ranch and the amount of cattle worked meant that the existing type of horse wasn't adequate for the job so King Ranch started a breeding program to improve the quality of the horses. They were looking for horses that were quick, had cattle sense and stamina. After many years of cross breeding a horse was developed that had these traits. This was the start of the Quarter Horse and the original sire had the designation of "1" on the quarter horse registry. All quarter horses have come from this breeding program.

After the tour, we sat in the visitors area and ate the lunch grammie packed. Original wagons were located around the grass. The red chuckwagon shows the King Ranch brand which was called the running W. Apparently its one of the most difficult brands for a rustler to over brand and claim for his own. In the back of the open wagon is a big ball of barbed wire from the 1860's. They don't use any barbed wire on the ranch due to cuts which get infected easily in the hot climate. They have enough miles of fencing to stretch halfway across America.

After lunch we went to see the King Ranch saddle shop where they still make saddles for the ranch hands as well as retail many other items. Very pricey but great quality. Here's a long horn close up. I wouldn't want him trying to gore me. The ranch place is immense and a 2 hour tour only covered one corner of the cattle operation. They also have the largest cotton fields in America here in their Texas holdings. An interesting day for sure.

Our Little Storm

Over the years we've been through a lot of storms with thunder and lightening and high winds, but non quite like the one of January 9th, 2011. The wind started howling about 3:30AM and then wild lashing of hail, after that the rain came down in sheets and the motor home started rocking. We hung on while this went on for about 3 hours. The next morning, expecting to find wide spread devastation we ventured forth. Our barbecue had been blown over which had never happened before; I picked it up before realizing I should have taken a picture. Unfortunately when it blew over it put a dent in the side of Harvey, which doesn't show in the picture.

The neighbour behind us had his trailer pushed off its jacks by the wind and it slid about 3 feet so he had to relocate it. Another few feet and they would have ended up in the canal. She said that it was moving so much they couldn't stand up so they got on their knees and prayed. She said even the dogs were kneeling beside them.

The neighbour right behind us had his awning wrecked. The radio reported the winds were up to 120 km/hr although I don't think it got that high where we were or there would have been much worse damage.

This boat was floating upside down in the bay in front of us. The night before it had been pulled up on the beach on the far side of the thatched shelter. So it blew end over end across the beach to end up in the bay.

 There was a lot of minor damage like torn awnings and bent flag poles. Some was not visible; one trailer had its skylight broken and got a lot of water damage. A motor home had water driven in by the rain and when the power finally came on it started a fire which burned most of his wiring. The power went off about 4 AM and never came back on until 7PM.

 Drifts of hail were still visible for awhile. The hail was about the size of peas, if they had been larger the damage would have been much worse. A tornado touched down about 5 miles from us and ripped the roofs off some trailers in another campground so we were lucky with our little damage.

All over the campground bark from the palm trees was scattered. The wind ripped them off the palms with enough force to scratch a number of RV's and cars. Fortunately, the palm beside us stayed intact.

The hail came down with such force that it flattened the fins on our rooftop heat pump and air conditioner. I spent 4 hours on my side laying on the roof straightening the fins, one at a time, on the heat pump. As my vocation, I knew damaged fins would reduce the efficiency of the heat pump by at least 30% so I got right at it. I've still got to do the air conditioner but its not warm enough to need it for awhile. We went for a drive and saw lots of damage in town so I guess we were pretty lucky. Hopefully no more storms.

Texas State Aquarium

We've finally gotten bored enough sitting around that we decided to do another tour. Its a cloudy wet day so perfect for a trip to the Aquarium just down the road. Although it looks like a real downpour, actually thats a waterfall feature at the entrance. Kinda cool.

You can see what a dreary day it was but also how close we are to the Lexington, made famous in my last blog. And, just down the street is the equally famous $1.00 margaritas.

The grounds are beautiful with great landscaping. The flowers were lovely, especially the rose in the middle.

We arrived just in time to see the diver enter the large tank to feed the fish. The tank has 350,000 gallons and the acrylic glass is 4" thick. The colours were amazing and all the fish came to her and ate out of her hand. She wears a chain mail glove because if the sea turtle nipped her hand she'd lose a finger.

He looks pretty placid after having lunch, but the moray eel in the lower centre looks like one big mean snake. 

After the diver feeding show was the dolphin show. They put three dolphins through their paces. This was the best photo I got of them jumping. It would be even more impressive if I'd gotten their heads in frame. Damn digital camera lag.

They certainly could jump. Before the show, they just swim in circles and look very bored but really come to life during the show. According to the announcer the training keeps them physically fit, mentally sharp and provides play for them which they naturally crave. They really seemed to enjoy performing.

There was an underwater viewing room so we watched the next show from there. They swim in a circle to pick up speed for the jumps and when they re-enter the water they turn quickly to avoid hitting the bottom.

There were a number of different tanks all with different fish and different themes. This was a Gulf of Mexico tank based on the fish found around the legs of oil rigs. There are over 3500 oil rigs in the gulf of Mexico and very few coral reefs so fish have teemed to the rigs for shelter and food. All these fish attract sharks such as this grey tiger shark. They must feed him well; all the other fish seem to ignore him.

These red piranhas from the Amazon have a tank all to themselves. They are about the size of a dinner plate. The writeup on the wall says they aren't really as bad as we've been told and are just misunderstood. Thats right beside the sign that says "Keep Hands Out" and "Very Dangerous". Not dangerous my eye!

We even found Nemo. This tank had some very colourful fish. It reminded us a bit of the aquarium we used to have at home, only about 100,000 gallons larger of course.

Although this is called an aquarium, there were a number of creatures who inhabit the Texas shores. Such as this migratory tourist found along the shores during the winter migration from the colder climes. A rather handsome specimen in a typical tourist local. Note the paper being carried which helps the tourist to acclimate  themselves to the specific location in which they find themselves.

The animals which are on display have been injured and cannot return to the wild. This roseate spoonbill has a broken wing. They also had sea turtles which lost flippers to fishing line and a large 10' alligator which was removed from a residential area.

 Sea Otters had their own habitat where they could swim and slide down water falls. Of course, as long as we were watching, they laid on these logs and did nothing. Apparently, they are very interesting.

 This bald eagle couldn't fly so he sat high on the tree looking bored. He was huge.

Finally found some otters playing around. It was a fun day and now we're heading over to Pier 99 for some $1.00 Margaritas. Can't believe we had to spend a whole day looking at fish just for some cheap drinks! Although we do feel guilty eating fresh, delicious seafood appetizers after oohing and aahing over a bunch of Gulf of Mexico fish. Naaaah!