April 14 thru 30, 2021
Wed., the 14th, Linda & Andy stopped over to say goodbye in the morning. They were leaving Galveston. Also, this is our last day with S&J and B&M. They all leave tomorrow. In the afternoon Gary & I did a 2 mile walk on the seawall with S&J and saw the damage from last night’s storm. Wow! High surf coming over the seawall in places and loads of debris washed up on the beach near a fishing jetty. We couldn’t even walk on the beach because the surf was so high up on the sand.
There was enough leftovers for all six of us from our 2 one-pot meals the other night, so dinner was easy. The winds had calmed down later in the day so we had dinner outside. Afterwards Bev & Monty and Gary & I went back to the beach for another walk to see if things had calmed down. They had and it was a beautiful night.
Thursday, the 15th, a sad morning with some tears as we said goodbye to Stacie & Johnny. We had said our goodbyes to Bev & Monty the night before.
The next several days we did some chores, caught up with friends/family via emailing and phone calls, worked on the blog, read, colored, walked, and did yoga. Gary & I also re-watched the tribute photo video that we created celebrating my mom and also watched her Celebration of Life service before it was removed from the funeral home’s website. I still think it was a lovely service, and one I hope she enjoyed from heaven with family by her side. On a lighter note, Gary & I watched One Night in Miami. Great film about a (fictional I think) meeting between Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke. Very well done… as they discuss their responsibilities (or lack there of) with the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Particularly relevant today with the Black Lives Matter movement still ongoing.
Monday, April 19th, we were in the mood for something fun so visited Surfside Jetty, the Kelly Hamby Nature Trail, and the LaFitte Cove Nature Preserve. Surfside Jetty was much calmer than the previous time we were there. Although we had high tide at the nature trail so couldn’t walk on the beach. At LaFitte’s we saw 30+ turtles sunning themselves, 6 indigo buntings, whistling ducks, roseate spoonbills, and a scarlet tanager who followed us hopping along on the ground for 10 minutes. That was cool! As one woman on the trail said to us, it’s a regular bird buffet today.
I also started a new historical fiction book by Kristin Hannah called The Nightingale… takes place during French occupied WWII and is about two sisters and the French Resistance. Excellent story and really sets the stage for life during that time period in France. That generation truly was “The Greatest Generation.”
Tuesday, April 20th, we took the ferry over to Bolivar Peninsula and visited High Island and the Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary. This had been recommended by a friend last year, but Covid interfered. This year we definitely wanted to make it over there. What an amazing experience!!! The rookery is a “favored nesting and roosting place for thousands of waterbirds.” Gary and I have never, ever seen anything like this. I generally don’t believe in bucket lists. Too much pressure. But, if I was a bucket list person… this would be on it!! I’ll let the photos do the talking. We saw hundreds of nesting birds… egrets, roseate spoonbills, and cormorants. Just a remarkable experience. Plus they have lovely walking trails where you can see songbirds, turtles, and crocodiles. We were in awe.
On a comical note… while we were at the bird sanctuary, we hear a car alarm going off. We look at each other and think “Oh no not here. Don’t tell me it’s us.” We start to walk back to the truck and the alarm stops. Phew! Not us. Some other poor sap. We get back to the truck later and there’s a read out on the dash “attempted theft.” Crap! The alarm is still going off. We definitely have to have this looked at soon because we know with absolute certainty that no theft was attempted!
Thursday, April 22nd, we dropped the truck off for servicing… including having them check out the truck alarm, rotating and balancing tires, and checking fluids etc. We had a laundry list. The truck hadn’t had servicing in a while and we wanted everything up to snuff before we hit the road for NH. The dealer was going to need the truck for a few days, so we got a rental from Enterprise. They only had one available… a tiny black Mitsubishi Mirage that felt like my butt was dragging the ground. The result of being in a dually all the time.
Saturday, the 24th, we had lunch scheduled with Olivia, Cesare and their daughter Celia. Olivia is the daughter of Gary’s former business partner Ken who now lives in Hawaii. Olivia lives with her family in Austin. They are a delight! And one of our sincere pleasures this winter was getting re-acquainted with them. Before this winter, we hadn’t seen Olivia’s daughter Celia since she was an infant and she is now a charming 21+ year old. We met at a busy and noisy Sunflower Cafe but had a delightful few hours catching up with them. Gary and Celia both have birthdays in April so it was a chance to celebrate both their birthdays.
Gary and I also had an eventful drive over from the campground to the restaurant, which ordinarily is about a 25 minute drive. It definitely took longer on Saturday. We saw two weddings on the beach (so sweet) and unbeknownst to us there was a SLAB weekend car rally going on. What is SLAB you ask? It was invented as part of the Houston Hip Hop culture. SLAB is an acronym for Slow, Loud and Bangin’. Who knew! These are older and larger vintage American autos in bright metallic colors, with “elbow wheels” (spokes sticking out of the wheels about 8” to a foot. We’re surprised it’s legal!). They were also all low to the ground with loud stereo systems. What was really funny was to see the people who came out to see this. It appeared to be the Hip Hop culture from Houston i.e. scantily clad women. It was a hoot! The police were all over the place. We saw more than a few people in handcuffs. We came back from lunch and stayed put for the rest of the day!
Sunday, April 25th, I made Gary an overdue spinach, bacon and cheese quiche for brunch for his birthday month. We did laundry in the afternoon and enjoyed a 2 mile walk on the beach after dinner. Beautiful!
Monday, April 26th, we were blessed to have dear friends Meigs & Paul drive down from San Marcos to spend a few days with us. These beloved friends were our neighbors for over 30 years in Nottingham, NH. M&P picked us up Monday morning and we headed off for breakfast. Then, since they are birders, we took the ferry back over to Bolivar Peninsula and visited Smith Oaks Rookery again. They both loved it! This time we saw a little more action with the roseate spoonbills and their hatched babies.
Afterwards we continued on to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge and experienced a once-in-a-lifetime event! We were driving on the road to Anahuac, which is a fairly deserted road, and came upon a cattle drive… in the road. Paul came to a dead stop on the road as the cattle and cowboys were coming our way. And we just wait…. Meigs & I are thinking that they are going to cross in front of us and go in the paddock off to the side. So I think, hmmm, I can stand outside and get photos. Gary vetoes that idea and with an exasperated sigh says “why don’t you just stay in the car.” Fine. Then we see the two front cowboys come past us and we realize the cattle are coming down the road and are going to pass right in front of us. Holy crap! There’s at least 100 of them… including babies! Wild!! We just sit there and Paul is videoing and then I start to video. But I had my window down and I was starting to get a little freaked out that somebody might stick their head in so I closed the window. Gary pieced together the good pieces of that video. O.M.G. such a cool experience!!
To be honest, after that Anahuac was nice but the highlight had been the cattle drive. We eventually headed back over to Galveston via the ferry and stopped for an early dinner at Salsa’s, a Mexican restaurant. Afterwards M&P dropped us off and we called it a day. Although since it was such a beautiful night, Gary and I headed out for a walk on the beach a little later and to see the Super Moon. Beautiful. Truly a special day with great friends.
Tuesday, April 27th, we headed over to pick up the truck early in the AM. Or, at least attempted to… the tire rotation was done incorrectly…. again. This is the second time this has happened. We had the very same thing happen last year. This time we left the GM manual on the front seat with a post-it on the page that explains how to do a tire rotation on a dually with polished chrome wheels. Also the service person wrote down specifically on the order how to do it. Did the mechanic look at any of that? Apparently not. My hubby is a calm man just about all the time. He rarely gets riled. He was livid… but in a relatively quiet, non-raised voice way. I’m trying to be the peacemaker to just get this solved. We have a conversation with a higher up who is somewhat argumentative telling Gary that’s not how the rotation gets done. Hello…. that’s what your GM manual says. As Gary says “I’m not making this up.” They fixed it but not before we got another phone call saying they would have to dismount the tires to do the rotation. Uh… no, you don’t. We’ve had the truck for four years and the tires have never been done that way. Afterwards our service person, who actually is very nice, said they don’t do many duallys. Yep, we could sort of tell that.
Between going to the GM servicing department in the morning and then back again in the afternoon to finally pick up the truck, we did get together with Meigs & Paul and headed over to LaFitte’s Nature Preserve to do a little more birding and then out to lunch. In the evening we met them over at Marco’s for a fabulous Italian dinner and great conversation. It was a really special dinner with very special friends. Thank you for dinner guys. So grateful that they made the trip down to see us before we depart this area. And a big thank you to Paul for helping us hone our birding skills and helping to ID some of our feathered friends. He’s WAY better at this than we are!
The remainder of the week was prepping for hitting the road. We did grocery shopping, prepped travel routes, started dismantling our outside set-up, sat poolside, got propane, etc. We also started watching a new series for us on Netflix called Peaky Blinders…. takes place just after WWI in England and focuses on an Irish crime family. Quirky and different!
Over the last few days we were happy to see that the campground was finally trimming up the poor palm trees that had taken such a beating in February. New green fronds were appearing and they were finally trimming away the old dead fronds. This was happening all over the island, which was much needed.
It poured all day on the 30th so we were grateful that we’d done most of the pack up the day before! Tomorrow we hit the road to head back to NH!
