Memory Lane

Goose Island State Park, Rockport, Texas
Today was a trip down memory lane the first thing this morning. My son got one of his earliest camping trips in this park. I located the campsite we were in that time and it still looks like when he was here. Over in the playground are the swings we played on. The high slide is gone, but the long chain swings are still here. In the picture you will see a set of regular height swings and then the tall set. They are exceptional fun for sure.
This wind blown tree is typical of most of the live oak trees in the area. The prevailing and frequent wind has twisted the trees into many different shapes, but always windblown. They are beautiful. The largest live oak is here also and my son and I once used one of the drooping limbs for a swing. Since some idiot a few years damaged the tree, the Parks and Wildlife have fenced it off so you are not supposed to climb on it an more. For some of the doubters in Washington, I took a picture of one of the channel bass, or Redfish as they are called down here, that a fellow was cleaning at the boat ramp. This is about the minimum size you are allowed to keep. He and another fellow limited out and also had a few other fish. The fillets off this these sure looked like a good meal in the making. Later on they get a lot bigger, in the 36 -40 inch size.
The fish cleaner had a big audience of “friends” waiting for the left over’s. He tossed a fish carcass in the water and one big fight started. However the fish carcass was to big for these pelicans to get into their mouth to swallow. At one time five pelicans had hold of the fish fighting over it. It was quite a tussle there for awhile, with a lot of squawking and wing flapping.
Just up channel from the boat ramp is some proper oyster reefs for those that have never seen them. The brown “mud” flats ore covered with oysters and are slightly submerged when the tide is in. There are several types of birds that feed heavily among the oysters during low tides. The best I could tell they were eating some kind of worms that live in the mud. A very little known fact is that when the tide is barely covering the oysters, they make a lot of noise. If you sit quietly in your boat next to them you can hear all sorts of clacking of the shells, water being squirted and other noises that I have never been able to identify.
The reefs can be very good for catching fish around. There were three folks that had waded way out into the bay to fish a channel amongst the reefs. I caught this picture of them as the day was waning. They are little dots way out near the horizon. This was shot with a three power telephoto lens, so you know they have a long walk back. Now these waters have stingrays in them. Believe me you do not want a stingray to stick his tail barb into you, so you shuffle your feet while walking. I once had a small one about 2 feet across slap the side of a plywood hull boat was in. The barb went through the 3/8” plywood. It just broke of the stingray and stayed in the boat hull. There was never even a leak around the penetration during the time I was around the boat after that.
Whew. I had a busy day. I have visited the new RV park and it is very rustic, but sufficient and cheap. I will be moving tomorrow for a month. Hopefully my budget can recover some even if the stock market doesn’t. Just an aside, I shot 58 photos today to cull down to these shown here. The first draft of today’s events was seven pages. It took a good while to get this old wind bag deflated enough too fit into the blog. Maybe I am having tooooo much fun. NAH! TheOFM