Airports & Rental Cars

Kansas City Airport - Very early (very) in the morning. In fact, I'm not sure anyone else was there. The ghost airport.

To Memphis then San Antonio. Grabbed my bag and hopped the rental car shuttle to Avis as I do nearly every week. BUT No reservation with Avis and I couldn't remember where I had a car waiting for me! After 45 minutes of begging various rental car bus drivers to check for my reservation, I remembered where the info was stored. After a long wait at the counter, I turned left out of the lot and drove 135 miles to my next turn in Corpus Christi. Another 30 miles got me to the Bluff. The roadsides along I37 were blankets of wildflowers.

Lunch with Linda

Lunch at Beamers with Linda

A locally owned, Texas palate sort of place. I checked out the menu online and knew just what to order when I arrived. Sprinkled among the Texas fare of steak sandwiches, burgers, fried this n that's were several good salads and a tomato/basil pizza. And good for them - they used whole basil leaves and freshly sliced tomatoes. But, of course, it wasn't about lunch - it was about seeing Linda.

Camille, my 30 yr old daughter, recently posted on Linda's facebook that she always loved going to Linda's house, she still remembers how nice it smelled, and that she remembered Linda's gift of Cami's first porcelain doll. Cami was probably about 2 yrs old. So, Linda and I have been around together for a while.

The last time Linda and I saw each other was when Jana, Camille's 6 yr old daughter, was born. No matter. We just picked up where we've left off like so many other times over the years. It's always like that with friends.

Wildflower Adventure Plan

Coastal Bend Wildflower Hotspot

The Travel Examiner lists the area north of Victoria, TX around the Yoakum-Cuero area as the biggest wildflower hotspot in the Texas Coastal Bend. On Tuesday, April 6, I'll arrive at Nancy's house around 11:00am, she'll hop in the car, and we'll head that way. On the way back, we'll dine in Victoria at a place I enjoyed a few years ago. 

Look at Texas Wildflowers

Our Route

Total Distance: 215 miles

New Morning Gallery - Asheville, NC

New Morning Gallery is a good spot to shop fast. Many of the artisans displaying work here have their own studios, and although it's always more fun to meet the artist and watch the work in progress, this gallery offers options galore and is filled with local art work of all sorts. With the limited time available to me while I'm working, this was an ideal one-stop shopping adventure. I think it would be on the Must-Do list if you're shopping in Asheville.

Jewelry! Which girlfriend gets jewelry? I didn't select any of the items pictured here - but I did make a really fun and unique selection.

Or pottery? Nope. Didn't get coffee mugs - but I will have a couple of very nice pottery pieces with me when I arrive in Texas.

Fun little pieces.

Take a virtual tour of the New Morning Gallery

Padre Island - World's Longest Barrier Island

Padre Island is the world's longest barrier island and the second largest island by area in the contiguous U.S. after Long Island. It's named after Padre Jose' Nicolas Balli (c. 1770-1829) who served as collector of finances for all the churches in the Rio Grande Valley.

We just called it "the beach". We started going to the beach when I was 3 - when we moved to Corpus Christi. Ironically, once we actually moved close to the beach when I was 10, there weren't many family trips out there.

Mary - Age 5 - 1952

 The Day Family
Camping on the beach for a week
1952 (Mary in the chair)

Mary - Age 45 - 1995
A day at the beach.
About this time, I was teaching beach in the summers
(Padre Island Ecology)

The Bluff

Flour Bluff is an area of Corpus Christi located on the Encinal peninsula bordered by Corpus Christi Bay on the north (1), Oso Bay on the west (2), the Laguna Madre on the east (3), and the King Ranch to the south (4). South Padre Island Drive crosses Flour Bluff (5), dividing it into an upper and lower part. What is now Flour Bluff Drive (6) was once a railroad going off the Texas Mexican Railway to the Naval Air Station (7). Waldron Field (8), on the south side of the Bluff, was built during WWII and is a Navy landing airfield.

The red flag is where I grew up - Azores Drive.
What Kind of Name is that, Anyway!
According to the Historical Marker located on SH 358 eastbound, near Laguna Shores Road, just west of the causeway, in the spring of 1838, France blockaded the coast of Mexico during the Pastry War. The strategic location of CC Bay led to the revival of smuggling and on August 7, 1838, Texans rallied at Texana to drive the invaders from the Republic’s boundaries. By the time the volunteers reached the area, some supplies had been landed near the tip of CC Bay, and about 100 barrels of flour and parts of a steam engine had been left behind. The Texans confiscated the usable flour, and the site became known as Flour Bluff. Excerpts & edits from Wikipedia

Eddie's Bluff Saveway 1966

Byrd Motor Company 1966

John R. Haynes, Constable 1965

Nicholson Grocery, 1965

Sue's Wig and Beauty Salon, 1966

Headed to the Hill Country

Utopia, Texas - Itinerary
Wednesday, April 7 - Afternoon & spend the night
Thursday, April 8 - All day & all night
Friday, April 9 - Until noon.

We've planned a Jamaican cruise on the Sabinal aboard the S.S. SplishSplash. The SplishSplash is a famous, and much sought-after, Hill Country paddleboat. I've made a list, and I'm checking it twice - Pina Coladas, mangos, Bob Marley & Willie Nelson.

This will be my view when I stay with Marie. Both Photos swiped from Marie's facebook.

The directions I received start like this:

"No address that the GPS will recognize."

Here's a bit of history from The Handbook of Texas Online.

The Handbook of Texas Online

Utopia, located in the Sabinal (or Ugalde) Canyon, is on the Sabinal River at the junction of Ranch Road 187 and 1050, twenty-three miles north of Sabinal in Uvalde County. ... 

Settlers had friendly contact with Tonkawa Indians who had come to plant crops for their people, who were due to come later. The Kickapoos raided many times during the early years. Lipan Apaches captured Frank Buckelew in 1866 and held him captive for eleven months. They also raided Mr. Kincheloe's home that same year while he was away. His wife, Sarah, Captain Ware's daughter, was lanced seventeen times, and Mrs. Ann Bowlin was killed. Warfare continued until 1876. Kincheloe moved his family to land a mile north of Waresville, where he built a two-story home in 1873, marked off and sold lots, and donated land for churches, a park, and a school. In 1884 a survey for the town of Montana was filed in Uvalde County, and the post office was moved from Waresville to Montana. When they learned that another place in Texas was named Montana, residents renamed the place Utopia.

High School Reunion - 30 yrs 1997

FBHS 30 year Reunion - Class of '66
excerpt from an old journal 7/1/96
It's been an emotional weekend. When I see these people, the ones I grew up with, it's always like looking at my teenage self from someone else's eyes. And then, too, it makes me sad that my children did not have the childhood that I had.

I'm trying to sort the feelings of being in that room filled with people who orbited my life through so many important years. It's not a love for each other, I think, that we feel so much, but more the love of the innocence we all shared. And my sadness for my own children stems from that - That they didn't have the innocent years, the safe-from-life years, that we shared. Their memories will be of who they kept from committing suicide, who helped what 15 yr old girl through her labor, who OD'd. Of outsmarting the armed guard in the school hallways.

Then too, the Class of 1966. Vietnam. Through our innocence, right behind the door, waiting, was the certainty that some of us would soon be dead. Or worse. But in February, 1965, I was in a government class at Carroll high school, and the teacher wrote on the board: MIA POW and I had no idea what that meant. I'd never heard the word marijuana. I'd not heard the phrase "uptight." And I still teased my hair every morning.

Three years later, living in Houston, selling decoupage in Market Square, going on dates to free soup lines for a lark, hanging out with all sorts of night people, Flour Bluff was just a story I'd read long ago. My nickname was Ruby Tuesday.. Ruby because for some reason I would never tell anyone my name. So they picked my name from the song.. "Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday, who could pin a name on you.." I think it was my way of getting out of the Bluff. Of finally being someplace where no one knew my name and had no way of finding out my name. My first chance to try on different "me" faces. And lordy, did I try on a few. I was 20 years old, and I could do anything.

So, now.. All these years later, and I'm in the room with Charlene, Brock, Candy, Phillip, Dwain, Joyce.. People who were, at different times, regular actors in my teenage life, and it seems that once again I realize people don't cross paths without meaning.

Some stars of the Texas Girlfriend Tour

Mary - 11th grade, 1964
FBHS Annual photo

Charlene - 12th grade, 1966
FBHS Annual photo

Nancy - 12th grade, 1966
FBHS Annual photo

Marie, 10th grade, 1966
FBHS Annual photo

Nitewalk - Padre Island

I love night walks on tide swept sand. When the receding tide has swept a long, glimmering path of wet, hard packed sand, toss shoes aside, and head for the water.

From the Padre Island shoreline, running parallel to the waterline, are three sandbars. Each bar, and the guts between, get progressively deeper until, after the third bar, you are in the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. At night, when the tide is out, the water is only a foot deep to the first bar. So a night walk invariably includes a walk to the first bar, and once you're on the bar, the water is inches deep.

I promise. Anyone who doesn't feel more alive after walking a half mile on that first bar in the moonlight is someone you don't want to know.

When you get in the car and shut the doors, the silence is like a vacuum. The rolling breakers, the shifting wind... silenced.

Five miles up the road on Padre Island Drive, headed to town, go under the John F. Kennedy causeway bridge that spans the Intracoastal Waterway, and circle under it on the island side of the ICW, drive over pot-holed, semi-paved, oyster shell-filled roads to Snoopy's.

Snoopy's is a restaurant that sits on the ICW. Finish the evening standing in line at the order window, carrying a pile of U Peel Em shrimp to one of the tables outside by the dock and watching a Great Blue Heron fish the shallows between the dock and the channel. You don't have to wear shoes. You don't have to fix your "beach" hair. You can put your feet up on the empty chair next to you, lean back, sip your coffee, and feel the salt air.

Even better, go to Scoopy's, next door, and get a banana split served on a big, round flat plate. Ya gotta eat it fast before it melts.. out there, in the warm coastal air.
mday March '95

Taken at a stormy sunrise.
Summer, 2008 while I was in town working for a couple of weeks.

Life Lessons from Tropic Isles

I wrote this in 1996 for a girlfriend who lived in Atlanta.

How to Throw a Castnet
The cast nets we use these days are usually nylon. However, I like the cotton ones better - they don’t tangle as easily. They generally have a radius of 4 ft. Circular nets with elongated weights placed around the edges about every foot. In the center is a metal ring through which the lines are drawn and to which the longer rope that loops around the wrist is attached.

Make a looped knot so that you can place the loop around your wrist (don't want to throw the whole net - lines and all into the water). With your right hand (if you're right handed) grasp the center metal ring. Lightly shake the net to make sure the lines are not tangled and to make sure the net is not hung on any of the weights.

With your left hand, pull one end of the net up - again stretching it to make sure all is free of tangles. For the real, down and dirty casting, place that edge between your teeth.

Now. Once again, pick up another edge - from the same side of the semicircle. Now your net will be fanned into a nice semicircle, slightly raised on one side.

With the right hand, the one with the looped rope around the wrist, (and also, the remaining rope will be looped and held in the hand).take another edge of the net. You will be standing in the center of a fanned semicircle of cast net.

Twisting from the waist, raise and pull back your right arm (like you’re about to dive). In one continuous motion, swing body from waist, extending your right arm. When your arm is approximately lined straight from the shoulder and slightly to the right in front of you, then lean slightly forward.. open your hands.

The net will fly into the air in a perfect open, circular flight. Wait 'til you feel it hit bottom, then immediately jerk the rope so that the weights will close the bottom of the net.

Quickly pull in the net..looping rope in hand as you retrieve it.

Quickly bring it out of the water.

Holding the circular ring, straighten the net. Holding the edges, open it so that the contents will land on the deck. (mostly seaweed, mud.. and maybe a shrimp or little fish). Bad luck is to get a big crab. They tangle in the nets and want badly to pinch you as you free them. (They aren't very bright.)

(Later lesson on how to hold a crab w/o getting pinched.)

Happy casting.. next lesson.. push nets


How to Throw a Castnet  Found this on Youtube - for your supplementary lesson!

Tropic Isles: 1957 - 1960

We never had to worry about "bad people" when I was growing up. There were no locked doors, and we could walk the streets into the wee hours of the summer nights. We were pretty much country. We played softball in a field nearby and Charlene’s horse sometimes doubled as backstop. We built intricate forts in the woody brush - hacked out the chaparral with machetes, cleared the ground. The girls furnished theirs with rugs, chairs, and cozy nooks. The boys' forts hid Playboy magazines.

We'd tie ropes to the tops of the trees and swing from tree to tree. Once, I thought my little brother had killed himself. The rope broke, and he landed flat on his back from 15 ft. We liked to never got that kid breathing again. He was 10.

Our property was in a subdivision that sat on canals dug from the Laguna Madre. From the Laguna, there was the Main Channel, and smaller channels branched perpendicularly from it. Laguna Shore Drive is a narrow road that runs alongside the Laguna Madre and over the Main Channel by way of a narrow bridge.

As kids, we'd stand on the edge of the bridge and act like we were hit when cars drove by. We'd scream and then fall off the bridge, swimming quickly underneath to see if the car stopped. The bridge is 15 or 20 ft above the water and the water was 5 ft deep. No matter how fast we doubled up when we hit the water, we'd sink into the silty mud.

There were 3 channels on each side of the main channel. We were on the 3rd, and last channel; it had 3 houses on each side and one at the end (Charlene’s). Then, the first channel had 3 houses on it. That's all the houses there were for about 2 square miles - maybe one or two isolated fishing shacks along the Laguna. At one point, there were 23 kids in the 6 houses on our channel. Probably 15 of those were pretty much the same age. (Note from 2010: I must have figured this number out in 1995, but I’m not sure it’s right.)

We all had little boats of some kind. My brother and I had a little wooden racing boat that Dad had fiber-glassed so heavily, it must have weighed as much as a cabin cruiser. It had a 2.5hp motor that broke down regularly. We got to be pretty good mechanics. On summer mornings, we'd all head down the channel in a row - rowboat, canoe, platform skiff... it looked like one of those Anything That Can Float races.

We decided to make the canoe into a sailboat. Someone had a 20ft joint of cast iron pipe that we fitted on the crossbow in the center of the canoe then tied sheets to it. Amazingly, we got that thing all the way down our channel and all the way to the bridge before it capsized, nearly hit Jimmy Scott on the head, and sunk. Guess it didn't hurt him much. He’s on Facebook making wisecracks on a regular basis.

Thinking back, the kids in that group have accomplished some amazing things. One was ABD in physics by the age of 24 . He traveled to Russia, China, well..all over working with scientists and patenting technologies. Then Jimmy is doing his academic thing. Others have successful businesses, or are doctors, or adventurers of different sorts. I think the freedom we had to invent and explore stayed with us. We'd spend our days in the Laguna Madre. There were spoil islands everywhere from Exxon's drilling, and we named each one: Skull Island, Bone Island, ... We were readers and debaters and philosophers. We were good kids. Mday 4/5/95 & edited 3/2010

Mary - On her 14th birthday, Oct 4, 1961.
You can see the Scott's canoe on their slope across the channel.

Mary - Age 14, 1961.
Charlene's house is over my shoulder & across the channel. You can see the boat house at the water. It was filled with frogs!

Tropic Isles

We moved to Flour Bluff in 1957, when I was 10. It was a small fishing community - fishermen and Navy and some Exxon people. Tropic Isles was the beginning of suburbia there. We lived on canals dredged from the Laguna Madre. Actually, “canal” is a word that became popular in later years. We lived on the channel. Part of this Girlfriend Tour is to visit Marie, who lived across the channel from me, and Charlene, who was at the end of the channel.

We were country..beach. Nothing in the Bluff to do but what was on the base and on the water. So that's where I grew up – going to movies for 10 cents at NAS Corpus Christi and playing on the Laguna Madre. We didn't have bicycles; we had boats. I could tear down that little 2.5hp motor on the back of the S.S. Peanut blindfolded. We always had to repair those things floating in the middle of the ICW. I carried a prop key in my back pocket.

This was a great place for a childhood. In later summers we shrimped all night. We had cast nets and push nets and would just light up the docks behind our houses and catch those little guys ‘til our hands were bloody. We'd lie out - the neighbor kids all in a row on the grassy slopes, and watch the night skies for shooting stars and ponder our pre adolescent universe.

The next door neighbors were tarpon and shark fisherpeople. They'd sometimes take me along, and we'd stay on the end of Bob Hall pier for 3 or 4 days - up all night - sleep on the pier during the day. We'd just lie on the wooden planks, right in the middle of fish slime, and sleep. A quick run into the surf solved any sticky problems; smelly problems didn't bother us much (until we got to be about 14 and wanted to smell good).

When I was 8 or 9, my grandfather taught me to sleep on the water - to go out between the bars where the swells are smooth, float along and fall asleep. I could still do it the last I tried at age 45. Of course, one eventually drifts into the breaker zone.

In my teens, I had a 59 VW bug that would go down that beach farther than most 4WD's. At 14, I started scuba diving, but didn’t do it after leaving home at 18. Up until the mid-90s, I still snorkeled around some - got urchins and neat little critters from the jetties for the folks I was teaching in my Padre Island Ecology classes.

So.. a bit of my childhood. It was a good one. / mary – March, 1995/edited March 2010

The VW & Mary - Padre Island, 1962

Christmas, 1959 - Mary & the S.S. Peanut

Bed Down Close to the Airport

River Walk
Palacio del Rio - April 9

Photo swiped from the web.

These Boots

Photo: Spirit of the Red Horse at the Atlanta Airport. Taken with my iPhone.

Itinerary

April 4 -   Land in San Antonio - drive to the Bluff.

April 6 -   Other side of the Oso for the night.

April 7 -   Hill Country - Utopia
April 9 -   San Antonio before sunset. Bed down near the airport.

April 10 - Early Flight Home

Follow the tour with Google Latitude