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Turtle Woodstock

Driving down the main drag in Port Aransas the other day, we saw a man holding a sign that said “Turtle Release January 27 4:00 pm Milepost 35.” Hmm, we wondered, what’s that about? Well, we learned from fellow RVers that a number of sea turtles had been cold stunned during the week when the temperatures went down into the 30s. There’s a rescue group associated with the University of Texas Maritime Studies facility in Port Aransas, and they had brought more than 60 green sea turtles and loggerhead turtles in to warm them up. When the water temperatures rose again, it was time to release them into the ocean.

Okay, that sounded like something to see, so we got a beach parking permit at the IGA and headed down the beach road on Tuesday afternoon. Cars were parked up to around milepost 32, so we parked and walked, and when we got to milepost 35, we couldn’t believe the crowd. It looked like Turtle Woodstock was taking place but the music hadn’t started yet. There were cars, golf carts, trucks, and sooo many people!


The turtle release down the beach drew a HUGE crowd

We had been warned to get there early, but we weren’t early enough to get a view of the turtle release from ground zero, so we climbed a dune to see over the crowd. That worked okay, but the U-Haul bringing the turtles got stuck in the sand, so it was well after 4:00 pm when the release finally happened. Each turtle brought out of the truck was sent to the sea with cheers. Though we could see them carrying the turtles down to the water, we couldn’t get a photo of any of the turtles from our far vantage point, but a neighbor at the RV park had worked her way to the front lines and sent me a photo she had taken.


A big turtle on its way back to the ocean

Corpus Christi Holiday Inns

Before we left Port Aransas, there was one destination I wanted to see—the Holiday Inn in downtown Corpus Christi, about 20 miles away. Mike wasn’t interested, so I set off on my own. Why did I want to see the Holiday Inn in Corpus Christi? Well, my first job was working for the advertising agency for a Holiday Inn management company in Cincinnati, Winegardner & Hammons. My dad was the advertising agency, and they needed someone to put stickers on 10,000 brochures printed in Japanese that had the wrong telephone number. I got the job, made myself indispensable, and stayed on as their printer and coupon/tabletent/menu layout person for a few years. They had a lot of hotels in the Cincinnati area, a few in Kentucky and New England, one in Anchorage, one in Coeur d’Alene, and three in Corpus Christi. I always wanted to see the ones in exotic locations. By the time I got to Coeur d’Alene a few years ago, there was no longer a Holiday Inn there, but I discovered all three of the Corpus Christi locations were still operating as Holiday Inns. I stopped to see the one downtown, right on the waterfront, and it is still a fairly nice building, with a beautiful lobby (although reviews say the rooms are not as nice as the lobby, sadly). 


Holiday Inn Corpus Christi

Then I drove down past the Holiday Inn Emerald Beach, farther down Shoreline Boulevard, and it’s still a going concern, too. And Emerald Beach and the bay are quite beautiful. I didn’t drive out to the Airport Holiday Inn, finding two of the old places was enough for me.


Holiday Inn Emerald Beach--it has past its heyday,
the reviews online were terrible, alas

On my drive back, I passed this billboard of Farah Fawcett, and found out later that she was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. I did not know that.


Farah Fawcett mural in downtown Corpus Christi

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