We had a fun evening last Sunday, when we entertained the crowd at the Casserole Potluck at the community tent. We had sat with some folks at the pancake breakfast on Valentine’s Day that we had previously played cornhole with the day before, and discovered the gentleman, Corky, was a mandolin player. When he found out that I had brought my mandolin and Mike had a guitar, he immediately set up a time to get together and play, with the idea of using that as a rehearsal to play at the potluck. It worked out great, and I think our entertainment was well-received by the potluck crowd, especially our closing number, “May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose.” We may do it again! Alas, no photos were taken to memorialize this musical repast. No, it’s not a Bird of Paradise — that’s a roseate spoonbill, flying just up the road from our campground I think Mardi Gras is my new favorite holiday. We went to another parade, this one consisting of about a hundred or so golf carts, with a few flo...

I don’t mean that there’s work to be done, although we had some of that. But there’s also been a near constant stream of fun things going on around here. It seems like we kept busy all day every day for the past week or so. To begin, we had a mystery. One night we didn’t sleep well because someone, somewhere kept shining a light in our windows sporadically all night long. Or so we thought. We blamed some workers fixing a water line at some condos across the street—they were definitely working all night, and we figured they just kept mis-focusing a spotlight that hit right in our window. Or, my first thought, did the drumfish start running and so all the fishermen were turning on their truck headlights to get out before dawn to make a big catch? Though we were tired, we kind of forgot about it as the day went on. Then, we went to bed, and a few minutes later—a bright light! We were up and out, looking around, trying to find the source of the light. I had checked the time when we fir...

  Winter’s over in South Texas, I’m happy to say. The air temperatures are back in the 70s during the day, and the semitropical sun makes it plenty warm enough for shorts and t-shirts. When the sun goes down, it does get cool quickly, but still only into the 60s. We can live with that. On Tuesdays there is Bingo up at the community tent at On the Beach RV Park. Occasionally I attend; the admission is a $5 lottery ticket, and the tickets serve as the prizes for folks who win Bingo games. That is never me. If there were a prize for the Bingo card with the most spaces still uncovered after someone shouts “Bingo!”, I would win that every time. They do jazz it up with side bets, but you actually have to get a Bingo to win those, too. Along with my lack of luck, when I do go up to a Bingo night, I recall just how numbingly boring Bingo is. I could bring a book and still keep track of the numbers called (since so few of them are on my card). All to say that they do a lot of fun things a...

 The Coastal Bend area of the Texas Coast is known as a birder’s paradise, and we have seen some pretty cool specimens, up close, including roseate spoonbills and brown pelicans and willets. This heron believes that he owns the wharf down at the harbor park in Port Aransas. He clearly is accustomed to posing for photos. Harry the Heron surveys his domain There’s also a tower to climb at the harbor park, giving you a good view of the waterway called Aransas Pass, where the ferry crosses to the mainland, and some of the huge ships that go through the pass. We often see dolphins in the water up there, but they are very tricky to photograph. The circle on the photo below shows a dolphin fin just popping up out of the water. This one stayed for quite awhile until we left to get a seafood dinner at Grumbles on the other side of the harbor. After dinner we drove around to the University of Texas maritime research facility and then past that, to the beach road which is amazingly well maint...