Packery Fun

Comfort Castle Location: Rockport, Texas
Adventure Location: Packery Channel, Texas

It was a cold dreary day in Rockport so the Truck insisted we ride on down to the Gulf and mess around. The adventure was good. The Travel Team parked in the very nice paved parking lot and eventually the Walking Team worked on out to near the end of the jetty. The walk was slow because everyone and even Buddy the dog wanted to visit. Buddy is a Golden Retriever who likes to steal your fish and run off with it.

It took a half hour just to clear from the parking lot. On the walk along the side of the channel were several family groups of very nice folks. Each one had to be visited on the way out to the end of the jetty. The current was running strongly and nobody was catching any fish. One pair of guys had not even lost a shrimp in an hour. Now that is bad fishing.

As the chosen path approached the jetty; a sight not seen by my eyes in a long time on the coast came into view. The boulders that line the channel had been receiving wind blown sand for a few days along with the nasty drizzle of rain. This caused some dangerous bridging of the boulders by the sand. It makes for a very nasty surprise for the unsuspecting.

Should you walk out on to the sand and step on a bridge, you will fall into the crevice that is hidden. Normally it is a minimum of a severely sprained ankle or knee or both. In a worse case scenario you will bust your head open on the boulders. Flowing blood is common when this type of fall into the barnacle encrusted rocks happens. Here are a couple of pictures of some of the bridges that had fallen in.



The drop on each of these was in excess of three feet. The salt water coast has all sorts of ugly surprises available to make your life miserable, but that has been said before in this blog.

Meanwhile back to the walk. There were an amazing number of surfers out playing in the water today. My count was fifteen of them challenging the waves. All of them that were seen up close were middle age or older men. None of them were young adults or kids to my surprise. Here are two of them paddling back out after a successful ride in to the beach. If you cliky the picture you will be able to make out one more centered across the pic near the horizon.

Now for the exciting part of the adventure. As my path approached the end of the jetty, it was noticed that a fellow was near the end taking pictures with a long telephoto lens. My progress stopped when the top surface was only damp instead of puddles of water. While my attention was on getting a great shot of the wave action, the fellow put his camera away and started back to shore. When he had made about thirty feet a wave broke across where he had been standing. It is not the froth and splash that is being talked about, but about a foot high rush of solid water. It would most likely have knocked him off his feet. The handrail would have saved him from going onto the rocks, but it would have hurt.

During the time of my picture taking at least four more waves washed across the walkway. In spite of my efforts this next picture was the best shot of my forty some attempts. If you look closely at the walking surface you can see where a small layer of water is about to wash across the walking surface. Catching a big one coming across eluded me.

Nearly every wave was splashing me a little or maybe more than a little but getting the picture for my readers was the most important thing……almost. Safety was first and this OFM was not about to get out on the end for a more spectacular wave shot.

Back at the parking lot were three fun and nice folks to visit. One fellow was learning to throw a cast net. It always looks easy but when you try it it becomes a monster to do. My advice from my years of tossing a cast net had him doing well enough soon to get them lots of bait fish.
While we were doing lessons the clouds went away and the sun came out. We shed several layers of clothing in a big hurry. The temperature went up to 63 and the sunshine was hot. Yep the OFM even got a bit of a pink on his face. A new fishing technique that had been passed on to me was tried out. It took a little while before the technique was mastered, but mastering it did happen. Now the fish have even more reason to fear me.

By the time the Truck got me home, my body was all tuckered out from all this trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.