Corpus Christi

We drove south from Houston to Corpus Christi, an interesting coastal town.  Wikipedia says it's an interesting blend of surfer, cowboy, artist, and oil worker.  Wikipedia also says it calls itself "The Real Windy City."  That seems to be a put-down of Chicago, but it's true there's a lot of wind there. We passed a number of windmill farms outside of town.  We also saw lots of this on our way into town.

The city has a large port and the USS Lexington, a WWII aircraft carrier was anchored there.  We visited on our first full day there.

Watch out for boys (old and young) playing with guns!

And Matthew was ready to take it out for a spin.  Here he is at the wheel in the bridge.

The ship provided Matthew's history lesson for the day.  In terms of local culture and cuisine, there is the Whataburger chain, which is rather large in Texas. In fact, Corpus Christi has a stadium (maybe baseball?) called Whataburger Field.

On day 2 we drove north of town to visit the Aransas National Wildlife Preserve.  This is the home of largest group of whooping cranes in the US.  About 40 years ago there were only 16 of these birds. With a great deal of effort, there are now about 400 in the US, with about 300 in this area. They are 5 feet tall with a wingspan of 7 feet. They migrate between here and Canada.  We took a boat tour of the intracostal waterway part of the park.

These birds mate for life, so we would always seem them in pairs.  And one pair had a juvenile bird with them.  We caught some "on the wing."

Some of the birds have monitoring devices on their legs.  We saw a variety of other birds.

And other wildlife. Some dolphins were swimming close to the boat. It was cool to see them.

After the boat ride we drove to the entrance of the "land side" of the park.  We had some up close and personal experiences with an armadillo and some alligators.  Fortunately, the alligators seemed to be sleeping!

The next day we went to Padre Island National Seashore.  This is the largest undeveloped barrier island in the US.  Matthew worked on a Jr. Ranger, part of which required him to pick up trash from the beach.

We were able to drive on the beach as well as walk.  We saw a variety of wildlife, including birds and jellyfish.

There was more beach-oriented wildlife, including Matthew!

All things considered, we had a lot of wildlife in our few days at Corpus Cristi.  Next, we head to San Antonio!