Sea Rim Again

We first visited Sea Rim State Park in Texas in January 2018, and wrote about it in a number of blog entries, most notably this one.  This visit is a month and a half later in the season, and we noticed two significant changes:  first, it's warmer this time than it was in 2018 (but not warm enough yet to paddle our kayaks in the estuaries -- we'll have to come back again to do that); second, with the warmer weather has come a big welcoming committee of mosquitoes.  Ruby kitten hasn't seen them before, and thinks it's great fun to chase them!

We had fog for much of our drive along the Gulf Coast from Galveston, east to Sea Rim.  One of the highlights of our drive was this beautiful, graceful, gold-highlighted Fred Hartman Bridge, which connects LaPorte, Texas with Baytown, Texas, crossing the Houston Ship Channel.  Fred Harman founded the Houston Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association.  (We think it's nice that someone like that would get a bridge after him.)

Interestingly, the highway crossing here was through the prior Baytown Tunnel, but the ship channel had to be deepened and the tunnel was in the way, so they just built a bridge instead.  It's a mighty high bridge.

Again, because we want to spend two weeks with Betty at her RV Park in Abbeville, Louisiana (travelling there tomorrow), and we want to get back to Pennsylvania in time for Katie's birthday in April, we have to cut a number of our stays shorter than we would like.

So we got cloudy, cool weather.

That's okay.  We know how to make the most of any place and any weather.  When we woke up on our one day here, on Wednesday, February 19, 2020, we decided to take a 4-mile walk along the beach, which is nearly pristine except for the ubiquitous tar balls that floated in, no doubt, from those Gulf oil spills.

Here we are at the start of our walk.  No entrance fee, because we are camping here.

The beach is very flat with firm sand, so the walk was easy.  We spotted gulls and terns, and this immense, somewhat irregular flying wedge of geese headed west along the shoreline:

They were followed closely by a small, perhaps 24-goose wedge that was geometrically perfect.  Obviously the geese that lead that little family know exactly what they are doing.  Besides, they could concentrate on form while simply following the larger flock.

The beach has litter barrels about every 100 yards.  They are in good shape and it appears that visitors have been very good about using them.  Many of the barrel frames had notices posted asking visitors to report any sea turtle sightings:

We ran into one snowy egret who, finally disturbed by our gaze, flew off up a little stream.  We caught him in his graceful motion as he flew away from us:

So, you say, what else does one do with a cool, windy day where, nevertheless, the mosquitoes are a bit annoying?  We answer:  Bake bread and make veggie sausage!  We've been planning to do this since we arrived back from Myanmar in January.  The projects were most successful.

We loaded all our favorite ingredients into the veggie sausage:  quinoa, black beans, chick peas, oats, spinach, carrots, onion, sun-dried tomatoes and the kitchen sink.  Flavored with a little Cajun Garlic Sauce, some thyme and cilantro, these veggie patties will warm our tummies on future mornings.

Meanwhile, the bread was rising, and when we were done with the veggie sausage, we put the bread into the oven to bake.  Voila, Rosemary-Olive Bread:

Did we mention that we couldn't resist trying it, and, yes, it was very light, moist and tasty:

Little Ruby enjoys a good project in the RV.  She jumps in and participates with all  four paws.  Eventually, all that cooking tired her out, and she collapse onto the dashboard for a nap.  She slept so hard, she barely stirred when we set off the smoke detector by opening the oven to pull out the bread.

We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning our cooking dishes and enjoying the view out our windows.  Ruby is now in full swing with her twice-daily walks.  She still doesn't tolerate the halter-and-leash more than about 15 minutes before trying to outrace it or outwit David by wrapping it around tires and trying to back out of the harness.  Still, she really enjoys the outside enrichment.  She chased mosquitoes here, and in one case leaped at least two feet into the air in pursuit of one of those little buggers.

We promised Betty we would get to Abbeville by noon on Thursday, February 20, so we had to get up at 5:30 am to be on the road by 7:30.  While our trip was only scheduled to take about 3.5 hours, we were uncertain about the ferry (whether it would be operating, or if we would be too big to take it), so we allowed ourselves extra time in case we needed to detour north by road in order to cross into Louisiana.

However, all went according to plan.  We arrived at the Cameron Ferry and were first in line.  We got a great view of the ferry as it approached our side:

We loaded quickly -- there were only seven vehicles in all.  We were the largest.  Twenty minutes after we loaded, we were docking on the other side:

We unloaded, were on our way promptly, and made it to Betty's RV Park before the appointed hour of noon.

We can't wait for the next two weeks of Cajun adventures!