Spring Break: The Morning After

Gulls fighting over a chicken bone

City worker cleaning up the trash. I think it’s going to take them a very long time…..

Looking for treasures with a metal detector.

A beer can tree and a gumball machine

Beach Finds 2

Mom and I walk on the beach early most mornings while we are here. We enjoy the beautiful sunrises

Watch the shore birds begin their day

The pelicans fly up the beach every morning.

Every now and then find some fun sand sculptures

And look for sea shells

But yesterday morning we found all of the above and more. There weren’t many shells, and there was more trash than normal, so we started picking it up which we do often. By the time we were done walking, we had picked up 6 grocery bags full of trash. Some of it was from the beach goers that were here this week, other things came in from who knows where.

It’s always interesting to see what we find. We have found shotgun shells, syringes, balloons, hardhats, shoes, large tubs, and anything else you can think of. We found a pair of men’s underwear, a glass jar filled with shrimp, and a big rope (that I called Al to come get) this morning. We found buoys and a condom the other morning.  Last year I found a quart jar filled with white rice that had washed up.

But the thing I hate to see most are the pieces of plastic washed up on the beach that the sea turtles have tried to eat.  The Texas Gulf Coast is home to many types of sea turtles. You can see them swimming along the jettys and canal, and occasionally they are washed up dead or sick on the beach, or can be seen nesting on the sand starting in April.  Several organizations that protect the sea turtles encourage everyone to call if they see one on the beach. 

From what I have read, the reason they try to eat it is because they mistake the floating plastic for jellyfish, which some sea turtles eat. This can often lead to death for the sea turtle.  For more information see this site: www.seaturtles.org

It is very evident when you see the bite marks on everything

They are the diamond shaped holes. Almost any piece of plastic that we pick up has the same holes in it.

One website I found said that as many as 1/3 of dead turtles found washed up on shore had ingested plastic. Many communities have started banning plastic bags for grocery stores which is at least a step in the right direction not just for the turtles, but for everyone’s benefit. I have many re-usable shopping bags that I keep in my purse and use them as much as possible. (in case you are interested I found some great ones at www.baggu.com!)

I’m sure tomorrow when we go out again, we will find even more trash and more plastic with turtle bites.

Pick up your trash people!

Spring Break

Spring break in Port Aransas has been in full force the last week. It’s been a loud crazy party. The police chief  said that there would be close to 100,000 extra people in this small town of +/- 3,300 people this week.  Today it definitely looked like they were all on the beach at once.  It took us 30 minutes to go about 1 mile on the beach road. Traffic was backed up in every direction.

There is just so much to see that the pictures I took just don’t do it justice. You have to be here, the pictures just don’t tell the story, but I thought I would show you anyway a bit of what we have seen the last few days.

Lots of beer bongs. I thought this was a stripper pole (we have seen many this week), but when you look at it closer, it’s a multi-person beer bong.

This truck was weird because it had an old guy driving, 2 old (older than 40!) women and 2 young ones in the back. All the women had beads…..you know how you get beads, right? It just seemed weird that the young ones were driving around with the old ones. At that age, I would not have wanted my mom with me at spring break, would you?

A lot of the people (us included) just watch. I love to people watch and this is definitely the place to do it. This truck had a keg in the back along with the guys. The cops were stopping trucks when people were on the sides all week, today they just get on the loud speaker and told them to sit down, they didn’t bother stopping them, there were too many.

I’m all for wearing what you want to a point. My feeling, though is some females can wear bikinis, and some should not. We saw lots and lots that should not!

There were several vball nets and games going on

And a wedding

And a cool tent made out of a parachute

This tent was renting out chairs & umbrellas to beach-goers. The guy on the cycle wasn’t smoking cigs, which I’m fine with, but not on the main road in front of the cops

There were just too many things happening that I can’t show it all to you. Hopefully this at least gives you an idea of the chaos that has been going on here the last week.

Thankfully most of them will be leaving tomorrow, and it will be back to the nice and quiet relaxing town that we so enjoy!

Bird Walk

Spring break is in full force here. The beaches are crazy with people.

Everywhere you look there are kids, kites, cars, bikinis, boom boom music and cops stopping kids. Most of them are pretty good, but we hear sirens often throughout the day & night.

Mom and I still walk in the early morning, but by the time I’m off work there isn’t any going to the beach or to the stores.  There are just too many people around this week. So we decided to go to a new part of town where they have a large birding area. It’s all walking paths with no vehicles allowed (so most of the spring break crowd doesn’t go there). 

Sadly the water was too low and we didn’t see many birds. We did see a White Ibis.

And lots and lots of sea gulls and laughing gulls.

Mom and I found some cool little shells in the dry flats that we don’t ever get to see on the beach.

And wildflowers.

And Fiddler crabs and their holes. The actual crabs are only about 1 1/2” long and their holes are only maybe 1/2”. It was interesting to see the round balls of mud & sand that they pull from the holes and the patterns that their claws make.

And a HUGE Desert King Snake. It was probably 3 or 4 feet long. After we saw him I wasn’t all too happy about going into any grassy areas (we looked him up and thankfully he was non-venomous). We also saw a big Jack Rabbit running down a path.

We spent probably 4 hours checking out everything and had a great day. Mom and Doug headed back to the truck and Al and I wanted to go one more place that I thought may have some more shells. I saw a couple shells on a rock in the water that I just had to have so Al obligingly went in to get them for me and……broke his flip flop.

We were about a mile away from the car and the path was nothing but rocks, sparse grass and full of sand burrs. And Al only has one shoe.  And it was almost dusk and it was time for the mosquitos to come out.

He limped along for a bit getting his foot full of sand burrs.  He even finally did the “you go ahead, don’t wait for me” thing. Until he got the bright idea to take off his sweatshirt and make a shoe!

 

We got some funny looks, but it worked!