Week Three, January, 2009

David & Nadine walking on the shore of North Padre Island which is about 25 miles from where we are staying in Port Aransas.....

We went to this wildlife refuge and was very impressed.....below is a copy and paste telling about it....the whooping crane will leave here late March, spend a month in Nebraska before getting to their final destination of Northwest Territory, Canada...there are only 450 or so in North America....at one time the number was down to 15.....

Aransas National Wildlife Refuge The bugle of an endangered whooping crane echoes across the far reaches of the marsh. Only at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge do North America's tallest birds find an enduring winter stronghold. Here, too, pelicans, herons, egrets, roseate spoonbills, ducks, and geese dine in brackish waters and salt marshes teeming with fishes, blue crabs, and clams. On shore, javelinas, bobcats and deer wander oak woodlands. Alligators peer from still waters of ponds and sloughs. Ringed by tidal marshes and broken by long, narrow sloughs, this 59,000-acres refuge sprawls mostly across the Blackjack penisula, where grasslands, live oaks, and redbay thickets cover deep sandy soils. Storms and waters of the Gulf of Mexico constantly reshape this vital refuge, home to over 390 different bird species.

This is as close as we could get to the whooping crane....also a cropped picture but turned out okay. We are going to make another trip and hopefully will be able to see the birds closer....they are HUGE.

We are use to seeing armadillo's dead along the side of the road, but this place was crawling with them....what a sight....

Javelinas or wild swine

Cute deerAnother pretty ocean picture....

Reuniting with classmate of 1960.....we had lunch with Sharon & Gordon Miley. They are winter Texans and Sharon (Gossett) and I both graduated from Chanute High School.....