Triple T; Thanksgiving Trip to Texas

OK, it was really a pre-Thanksgiving trip, but this voyage has a history. About a year ago, Ann and I realized we were doing a lot of traveling, but very little with each other. So, I decided to tag along on one of Ann's professional trips to New Mexico. Bought a ticket and everything, when the parental world spiralled downward, beginning with Betty's fall at our house at Thanksgiving. Long story short, we cancelled that trip, but got vouchers for less $ to be used within a year on American Airlines. Hmmm...with time running out, we realized the only window left in our busy schedules was the patch of days before Thanksgiving. Since we were heading up and west for Christmas, and to the Little's for Thanksgiving, we decided to look southward for a dose of warm weather, and what? birding?

Then I remembered the wonderful time had at an ESA meeting in San Antonio years ago. And the flight out of Knoxville was just a hair over the value of our vouchers. Then Ann met a serious birder at a conference who had several recommendations for Texas birdwatching. Early Saturday morning at the crack of dawn, with the Larry Little taxi service, off we flew to San Antonio. Hopped in a rental car and headed for Corpus Christi and Padre Island National Seashore.

Above is where we stayed; the George Blucher house in Corpus Christi. The neighborhood is not the greatest, but we have nothing but good things to say about the proprietors and the B&B itself. Especially the second B! Breakfasts here were outrageously good and large. In fact, so large, I started referring to them as brudinner...breakfast, lunch and dinner, caloriewise. I wish we had more pictures of each dish for you, but they came in 3 courses; a fruit course of some kind (e.g., grilled pineapple drizzled with syrup and covered with almonds, with blueberries scattered around and nutmeg), a main course (e.g., egg and cheese souffle), followed by a dessert (e.g., bananas foster, or blackberry cobbler), accompanied by juice, coffee, and croissants. Is that enough for breakfast?

Sunday, it was off to Padre Island, where we enjoyed the shore birds, Ann more than I, as she tried to resolve lingering doubts about the differents between knots and have nots; least sandpipers and most sandpipers; herons and hair-offs (baldpates?); caracaras and white tailed hawks. On the way to Padre Island, we caught this nice view of an osprey, eating his own brunch...


Here are a couple of pictures at the beach.



That evening, after a full day of scrutinizing shorebirds, we were hungry (no lunch helped...) and stopped at Snoopy's (85% approval rating on UrbanSpoon) and had nice seafood in an even nicer location. A couple of pics to give you the flavor of the evening...