On December 27, we woke a bit late from our night in Port Lavaca, around 8:00 am and went to breakfast at a place called Tacos. My wife had a nopalito taco and a bean and bacon taco. I had a carne guisada taco and a potato and jalapeno taco. Generally, pretty good stuff.
Then, we drove south, roaming around Indianola and Alamo Beach and places nearby. We watched the bay for a long time, eyeing a freighter bearing two flags; US and a red flag with blue square in upper left corner…something on blue field, but not sure what. We saw lots of birds; pelicans, roseate spoonbills, ducks, geese (Canada and Snow), and lots of others.
SeveThere were several places for sale on or near the beach. We finally found a for sale sign with prices: $150,000 each for 4 50x100 lots. The more affluent owners in the area, or maybe it's the municipal officials, seem designed to run off people who own the tiny plots with trailers. The plan: get taxes too high, they must go, then we can take their land.
Later, we headed on to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, where we saw various sea birds, etc., but not as exciting as Indianola and yesterday.
We drove through Rockport and Port Aransas. Rockport is a great example of stupid, misplaced greed being used in place of intellect in urban planning. Yech! I once would have liked to have lived there. No longer.
We drove on to Corpus Christi and wandered around, saw one of my childhood homes, and generally goofed off for the afternoon. We finally decided to stay overnight in Corpus and got a room a the La Quinta on Old Brownsville Rd. in an area I wasn't familiar with.
Then, we drifted off to have dinner. We end up at steak place (Long Horn Steak and Ale, I think). 2 ribeyes and baked potatoes. My wife had a margarita, I had a vodka martini with olives. We had planned to eat seafood at a place called the Yardarm, but it was closed for several days. Service was less than great at the place.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped to buy gas at an Exxon. The sign said it was $2.959 per gallon. It was not manned…only the electronic pumps. After a short stint toward filling the tank, I realized I was being charged $3.459 per gallon. After getting to the hotel, I sent messages to two local TV stations, encouraging them to go after the thieves. I'm confident nothing will happen.
As we were driving around an area of town called Six Points, I noticed a restaurant called Price's Chef, a restaurant I remember from my very early childhood in Corpus. I learned that it has been sold at least twice since I lived there, most recently about five or six months ago, to a couple from California who wanted a slower pace and a lower cost of living than LA.
Today, we ate breakfast at Price's chef and then went downtown to the bayfront, where we watched pelicans and shrimpboats and a surprisingly desolate tourist area.
When we finally hit the road, we drifted north through Portland, Gregory, Taft, Sinton, Woodsborough, Refugio, Victoria...and on and on. In Woodsboro, we did a quick spin around the square, where I spied an old cafe and store (sign says it's been there since hte 1940s); I think I recall visiting the little cafe with my dad when I'd travel with him as he'd make his rounds to lumber yards, selling boxcar loads of lumber to them. We'd both get apple pie ala mode at the Woodsboro diner. Our lunch was at Moya's Mexican Restaurant in Refugio. It claims to have been around since the 1930s. The strange thing we both noticed was that every patron and every staff member was Anglo...not a Hispanic in sight. Refugio is a very heavily Hispanic place. Should have been a warning. Food was edible, but only just so. We'd have been better off following our typical nose toward a taqueria where you buy tacos at a window and eat them at a wooden picnic table. But, today was chilly and very windy, so instead we ate at Moya's. Slowest service this side of a Michigan diner where we ate years ago and still talk about today (slow as in breakfast ordered at 6:00 am might make it to the table by noon).
With no particular destination in mind today, we ended up in Bastrop, where we stayed for a night sometime last summer. We're in the same hotel, a Comfort Inn. After relaxing for awhile in the room and cursing at email from the office, we went out for dinner at the Roadhouse, which was good...I had a bacon cheeseburger and my wife had a cup of green chile (pork and green chiles and tomatillos, etc.) and some buffalo wings.
No idea yet what tomorrow holds. Maybe a visit to La Grange, maybe a trip to Giddings, maybe further east or west. We'll see.
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