Texas Gulf Coast

The day after Christmas we headed down to Texas, dropped the dogs off with Monica, and continued to the gulf coast where we had rented a little cabin.

The word “shack” comes to mind, but it was a brand new shack, very nice inside.

Which turned out to be a good thing because after the first 24 hours, our weather turned lousy.

I got some good pictures of our first day though. Here’s the dock, which was the entire reason for the trip. John grew up fishing in Minnesota and doesn’t get to fish much in the deserts of New Mexico.

Shortly after arriving we were treated to a beautiful sunset.

John does catch-and-release, and we hadn’t had time yet to buy any local fish, so we figured for our first night we’d just have a frozen pizza. Turns out there wasn’t an oven, giving a new meaning to the term, “pan pizza”.

The next morning was windy and cold, but I was determined to get into my kayak. The wind was coming from the north (across the land), so the water wasn’t very choppy.

It was cold, so we kayaked in our rain gear. Rubber boots would have been better than hiking boots, but I don’t own any. I would if I lived in that region.

By noon on our first full day there it clouded up.

The rest of the trip mostly involved walking in the rain and fishing in the rain. One time we bought some fish and grilled in the rain. The fish was excellent – the grilling experience not so much. Sometimes we gave up and sat around in the cabin.

Here we are taking a ferry in order to walk in the rain somewhere else.

They drive their cars on the Texas coast. Typically I would have had something snarky to say about that, but it’s not like the coastline was beautiful or anything anyway. (Ok, I guess that was snarky.)

John found this interesting.

And we had to walk a long way out on the jetty – why? Because it was there.

Later we parked along the water front to go on a little walk in what was supposed to be a natural area. As we walked along the road to where the trail started, some kind local was so concerned about us walking in the wind and rain that they stopped and offered us a ride.

The natural area was underwhelming.

I don’t know what that oil rig thing in the background is. All I can tell you is that it’s massive. It’s far larger than it looks in the pictures.

And it was right next to a water front residential area.

I love this picture, it’s surreal:

I can almost but not quite imagine what this must look like in the summer.

Here’s John fishing in the dark in the rain.

On our final morning I was determined to kayak a second time. After all, we had brought our kayaks all the way down there from home. It was windy and cold, and this time the wind was coming from the south, across the water. We had swells and some wave action. Here’s photos of standing on the shore evaluating the wisdom of going out in that.

We decided to go for it, but I didn’t try to take any photos while kayaking. We definitely got wet.