Travelog - Day 16, Feb. 16

Estero Llano Grande State Park, World Birding Center. $4 per adult; dogs permitted on leashes no longer than 5’. That’s where we are to see cormorants, coots (sorry no old coots or cooties), snowy egret, white pelicans, red-bellied woodpecker to name a few, thanks to meeting up with a lady from British Columbia who is helping with the bird count over the next 4 days. It’s thanks to Karen that we finally spot the big attraction on Aligator Lake. This fellow is big, lazing on a steep,sunny bank on the other side, a bull rush in his closed mouth and several others mask his face just below eye level. Eyes are closed of course. His ‘missus’ was not to be seen – probably home vacuuming or something. Believe me alligators are much smaller than crocodiles, or at least compared to the ones we saw when on safari in Kenya.

About 1:30 we’re back in the car heading east for Brownsville and the Gulf of Mexico. As we’re leaving Weslaco I spot a sign giving the population, just short of 30,000. I wonder if they count all the people who winter here as well.

All of a sudden we’re right up there with the palm trees on an elevated section. More construction - cranes, monstrous piles of sand, buckets of cement on one side indicating more highway to come. Somehow we miss the exit for #4 and have to do a U-turn at the Mexican border. Now I understand that we haven’t missed it; there was none. No matter there is on the return section.

Coot
Cormorants & snowy egrets on the branches.




"Catch of the day". You'll have to look long and hard to find this fellow.

Flowering palm
#4 highway takes us to the coast. I look up and can see forever, but off to the east are giant cranes and what looks like an oil rig on its pilings. A glimpse of sand, sanddune perhaps. I didn’t think they made land this flat. Sand and water are getting closer. We bypass the entrance to a wildlife refuge. Still lots of vegetation, but tons of sand too; soil layer is very thin. This road feels like it will drive straight into the ocean. There is now water on both sides of us. The tide is out, but is it coming or going? A road sign advises ‘watch out for water on the road.’. Stunted palms appear like upside down dust mops having a ‘bad hair day’, quite comical to see. Some are flowering.

I spot a palm in flower not too far from the road. We stop and I do my best to brush sand off my feet before inserting them into my leather clogs. I really should buy myself a pair of Crocs like everyone else. Then I gingerly high step through the tall grasses to take my pictures.

Sign says ‘road ends in 500’; I prefer ‘water starts in 500’. Either way we are on the beach and you can drive forever or so it seems. And so we do, well not that far, since there are trucks parked away in the distance. I open the door and look down. Neat. Tiny shells implanted in miniscule waves of sand. Did you know that shells land almost exclusively with their outer shells upward? I hop out of the car and push the tiny shells into very fine sand, then proceed to destroy the delicate sand wave patterns with my bare feet.
You know where I am going. The water is cold, but not unbearable. The waves create a momentary loss of balance as I sink in. The dogs have no idea of what to make of it all. And in the end Al decides not to risk letting them loose. Al drives back up the beach to the entrance and I stoll along sometimes in the sand dunes, sometimes in the wet sand, my head down searching out the most perfect shells which I drop into a plastic bag. The last time we saw sand dunes was in Denmark almost 25 years ago, but there are no jelly fish here thank goodness. I’m not sure I would want to go swimming here as the waves seem to produce an undertow. Where the beach meets road and in the sand dunes, there are a half dozen or so campers. Back in the car we see the many cranes & sea platforms off to the east. Then a sign announcing a stop ahead which we hadn’t particularly noticed on the way in – border police checking for illegals who might have just accidentally drifted in to the shore and in to our car. The journey back to our trailer is the same boring highway running through areas so built up, we don’t know when one ends and the next begin