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| UPS called shortly before 4:00 pm today and said they couldn't find our site so Galen went and found him and brought him home. |
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| My TerraTrike unloaded from the truck. It comes completely assembled and ready to ride right out of the box. |
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| My first ride on my TerraTrike Rover! What fun! Two neighbors have already tried it out and loved it, too. |
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| This overview of the Birding Center, taken from the observation tower, shows only one corner of the boardwalk area. It was warm while we were there, but less than an hour after we got home, a norther blew in rocking our "house" and lowering the temperature. It is sunny today but about 20 degrees cooler than yesterday, with a high only in the 50s. Chilly for us, but I expect 50s sounds pretty good up in the frozen north where winter has hit hard this year. |
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| Galen and friends, friends until the bread runs out. |
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| See the little pile of sand to the left of the couple on the left side of the photo? That big piece of machinery was moving sand from the other side of the beach to the waters edge and we figured it would take them a while to build up the beach that way. LOL! Not really. We knew what was coming and come it did. A few days later dredging operations were underway and huge pipes were laid along the beach making walking on the beach impossible at high tide and unpleasant all the time. I understand the channel between the Laguna Madre and the Gulf of Mexico must be dredged so boats can get through and so we can still have an RV park here, but I still don't like it. The good news is that dredging operations need to be completed by February 1, so we'll have a whole month of pleasant beach walking. |
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| The smaller of a couple of alligators that live at the Birding Center |
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| I don't know what kind of fish these are, but they were fun to watch. |
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| The Birding Center from the back |
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| The entire viewing area is on a long, long, boardwalk and there are at least half a dozen of these bird blinds. This particular blind overlooks the Laguna Madre (ocean) but there are also fresh water areas at the Center. I like going out here so much that I bought a three month pass four days ago and will be making my third visit to the Center today. |
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| Greater Yellowlegs |
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| Greater Yellowlegs |
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| Great Blue Heron |
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| Black Necked Stilt with fish in its mouth |
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| Black Necked Stilt |
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| Bairds Sandpiper (I think) |
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| Great Blue Heron |
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| Roseate Spoonbill |
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| Roseate Spoonbill |
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| Galen climbed up on the roof today and shot photos from all four directions. This shot was taken toward the Gulf of Mexico. The beach is on the Gulf. |
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| This shot was shot to the north toward the business/condo section of South Padre Island. |
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| This shot was taken toward Port Isabel and the Laguna Madre. You can barely see the bridge and Port Isabel in the background. |
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| This is a view of the Channel that runs between the Gulf of Mexico and the Laguna Madre. We can see the Channel, although not this well, from our kitchen window. |
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| We were here only a week before they started laying pipes for dredging. I hope they finish quickly and get those ugly things off the beach. |
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| Here I am looking for shells on the beach to send to our grandnephew, Shep. It has been around 80 most of the time since we got here, but today was in the 70s. I shed my jacket shortly after this photo was taken. |
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| I snapped this shot during one of our first days back in town. |
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| The jetty. I sometimes like to just come out here and sit. |
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| This lady walks her dogs on their leashes and her kitties just follow along. It made me smile every time I saw her and today, our last full day in San Antonio for this year, I finally got a photo. |
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| Site 313 at Greentree Village, our home for the past two months. If the truck wasn't in the way, you could see the dog park across the road. On nice days when the door was open, I enjoyed sitting on the love seat and watching the dogs. The kitties in the photo above would go in the park, too, if there weren't other dogs there. If there were, they would wait patiently outside the gate. |
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| Our Sunday school class always has their Christmas party after Christmas. In this photo we have already eaten too much and are just about to begin the white elephant exchange. It is the last time Galen and I see these lovely people until next November. They make leaving San Antonio a difficult thing to do. |
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| People are funny. They want the front of the bus, the middle of the road, and the back of the church. This quote was in the bulletin today and the photo was taken from the back of the church. The church is Coker Methodist Church in San Antonio and is our home church. |
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| We met our friends for breakfast at the Guenther House, one of my favorite places to eat in San Antonio, and had to get our annual photo of the candy house. This house, which is also decorated inside, took 150 hours to complete and 90 pounds of building materials (candy). |
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| Andrea and I went to the library today and I took a photo of this amazing Chihuly glass. The library took it down last year because they didn't want it damaged during some major remodeling. |
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| Galen, with the help of two friends from church, put together this gorgeous banjo from parts owned by another friend from church, and we sent it to Jen for Christmas. The back is burled walnut and is so pretty I briefly considered taking up the banjo, but only briefly much to Galen's relief. |
