Day 7: Homeward Bound

Itinerary:

Up at 5:30

On the road at 6:00

San Antonio at 9:00

Return rental car and be at airport by 10:00

Fly to Memphis at 11:52

Fly to Minneapolis at 4:05

Arrive in Minneapolis at 6:20

Drive home

Day 6: Port Aransas

Wednesday

We’ve been eating fresh grapefruit every day. On Monday morning, Grandpa was giving us a tour of Port Aransas and he asked if we’d like to pick up some grapefruit. We gladly agreed, thinking he knew a place where there was a good market. He drove up to somebody’s house, and he hopped out and told us to stay in the car. We looked through a fence and saw that he was picking grapefruit from a tree in somebody’s yard! It was a friend of his, of course, so we didn’t have to worry about him getting caught. The grapefruit are very tasty! They have a milder flavor than those we get in the store – not as sour.

This morning was a bit windy, but not too much to try some tennis. After the three of us took turns hitting around, Dad and Joel played another set in the ongoing saga between the two tennis pro wannabes. This time Joel prevailed 6-4, taking advantage of the wind and the fact that his Dad is a day older than he was yesterday.

We went for a drive and planned to walk on the beach, but the wind was so strong that it was sandblasting our faces. So, instead we walked on the pier near the tennis courts and watched the pelicans glide along the waves. These are pretty big rollers that break in the shallow water where surfers try to catch them. The pelicans seem to be hunting, as they fly with their wings almost touching the water right along the crest of the wave. It appears that they are hoping to scoop up a fish that has been carried to the top of the wave, but we didn’t see any pelicans actually find a meal this way. I guess it’s also possible that this is just fun – a pelican’s form of surfing.

It was a lazy afternoon. The wind was too high for tennis or fishing, so we hung around the house. Mom sat in the sun on the protected side of the house and read a book. Dad took a nap in the easy chair and Joel did some reading and snoozing.

We invited Grandpa and Grandma over for taco salad, so that was our evening. After dinner, we played blackjack until about 8:30. Joel and Grandpa got into spirited discussions about blackjack strategy. Grandma put it well when she observed “now there’s two people who like to argue!”

The plan is to be up at 5:30 and on the road by 6:00am, so it was time to pack up, clean up the house, and get to bed early in preparation for a big travel day. It was a fast four days in Port Aransas!!!

Day 5: Port Aransas

Tuesday

Today was a warm, cloudy, and sometimes foggy day. We started with a trip to the tennis courts. After some hitting around, Dad and Joel played another set, which was very hotly contested. After Joel took a 4-1 lead, Dad battled back to tie things up at 6-6. The tiebreaker fell in Dad’s favor and Joel fell to the ground, experiencing the agony of defeat. His consolation is that he’s getting better, faster and stronger with age and the same is not necessarily true with Dad. Grandpa and Grandma came to watch, so there was even an audience!

After a quick lunch, Dad, Mom, and Joel took a walk on the beach and collected some seashells. We saw a few more jellyfish and a poor little dead puffer fish. A very cute little fellow, but for whatever reason, he’s all done puffing. There were some surfers out (not the gigantic surf waves you see on TV) and a few people swimming. The waves were a bit higher today than yesterday. The water isn’t really warm, but it’s probably OK for swimming. The air temperatures haven’t been a whole lot above 70, but when the sun came out for a few brief moments today, it really started to feel warm.

The afternoon was another good fishing trip, with Dad, Mom, Joel, and Grandpa Dick participating. Mom didn’t buy a license today, so she handled the net. It didn’t take long to catch another limit of sheephead. These fish are pretty amazing fighters. There were times when it looked like the fish was going to pull Joel into the ocean!

Oh, an oversight from yesterday’s fishing trip. Mom proved her fishing prowess when she was reeling in a sheephead. As it approached the boat, another sheephead followed it up. It was probably a female on the hook and a male in pursuit. They were right next to each other, so Dad scooped them both up with the net. So, Mom is the only person on our trip to catch two fish at once!

We also caught a new kind of fish today – Piggy Perch. They aren’t very big, and they don’t look like a Minnesota perch at all. They look kind of like a bass but more silvery and they have a big spot by the gill. These are fish that aren’t good for much, so Grandpa instructs us to feed these to the pelicans. Strangely enough, there weren’t many pelicans by the boat today. I think they were all out by the beach eating minnows in the surf. So we had a hard time coaxing a pelican over to feast on a Piggy Perch, but finally one came over.

We saw some more dolphins today, and when a large ship passed by, Grandpa told us to watch in front of the ship. There were a few dolphins swimming in front of the ship, coming way out of the water. They looked like they were having a fantastic time doing their aerial acrobatics! Apparently they like the current that a big ship creates in the front and enjoy taking a joy ride when they can.

Everyone has gotten a good laugh at Dad’s attempts to back up Grandpa’s truck and boat trailer. When we are done fishing, Grandpa drops us off at the dock and Dad drives the truck to the boat launch. This involves backing the truck and trailer to the water so Grandpa can drive the boat up onto the trailer. Well, Dad is used to backing up his trailer using the van, which allows him to look directly out the back window. Grandpa’s truck requires the use of the two side rear-view mirrors. This has resulted in a zig-zag approach that has made for many laughs after repeated tries and some crooked landings. However, today Dad finally got the hang of it and made a fairly straight entry in the intended spot. This wasn’t nearly as much fun for Joel as the previous days’ attempts!

After cleaning the fish, we went to a couple of shops to get a t-shirt for Joel. We tried to go to a candy store, but somebody put up a “Closed” sign just as we pulled up. Maybe all the better because we’ve been eating very well! We then went to a restaurant called “The Cancun” for a Mexican dinner. It wasn’t a fancy place by any means, but the food was very good.

We had dessert at Grandpa’s camper and watched a little basketball. Now it’s time for bed! Everyone is very tired from another busy day.

Day 4: Port Aransas

Monday

The morning was beautiful! High 50s with no wind, and a forecast for very pleasant weather. We started by going out after ghost shrimp (Grandpa Dick, Dad, Mom, and Joel), but the tide was too high and we couldn’t get to where the shrimp were. So, instead Grandpa Dick took us on a guided tour of Port Aransas, driving us to various places and telling us stories, of which he has plenty!

We returned home and went to the tennis courts. The three of us hit for a while and then Joel and Mom played a little, followed by another Dad vs. Joel set, which Dad won 6-4. We will play more soon. We considered playing another set or two before the day was over, but we just got too busy.

After tennis we went for a walk on the beach. We picked a few sea shells and tried to rescue some very beautiful purple jellyfish that were washed ashore, but I fear they will just wash back up again. There was a grader going up and down the beach leveling out the sand. They have a bunch of plant debris that has washed up and they have taken it out by the truckloads. Apparently it rots if they don’t remove it.

After a quick lunch, it was time to go out for the afternoon fishing, this time it would be Grandpa Dick, Dad, Mom, and Joel. We went to the same place where the fishing was good yesterday and it didn’t disappoint us. We caught lots of sheephead and Joel caught a grunt (not to be confused with the croakers he caught yesterday). Grunts do exactly that. Like a croaker, they make a noise, but a grunt makes a sound like a pig grunting whereas croakers … well, they croak!

Joel managed to steal the biggest fish of the trip by getting snagged. Dad was helping him out and said “here hold my pole while I get this out for you” and sure enough, Joel hooked into a sheephead that measured 22 inches and probably weighed 6-7 pounds. It was a day of fast action, with Mom and Joel busily catching fish, breaking their line and getting snagged while Grandpa and Dad tied knots, unhooked fish, untangled snags, and had a few moments to catch some fish as well.

We were tied up by a big concrete block and rusty pilings from an old pier that once had a walkway overhead. The sheephead like to chew the barnacles off these structures with their teeth that look like horse teeth. At one point the boat must have bumped one of the pilings and a pile of rusty metal fell right on Grandpa’s head. It sounded like someone had spilled a can of sinkers on the boat floor. We looked up and realized that there was a lot of metal and concrete up there that could come spilling down. Maybe we won’t anchor in that spot any more, even though it is very good for fishing!

We went home and cleaned fish – we have a nice system where Grandpa fillets the fish, Dad skins them, and Joel rinses and bags them. Then Grandpa fried up some of our day’s catch and we had a fantastic meal of sheephead, salad, fried potatoes and onions, followed by a desert of cantaloupe and 7 layer bars. Everybody was stuffed! It was delicious!

Now we are at the house winding down and getting ready for an early bedtime and a sound sleep after a day of fish, fresh air, and fun.

Day 3: Port Aransas

Sunday

What a full day! It began in earnest about 7am when we met Grandpa Dick to get everything ready to go fishing. It didn’t take long to hook up the boat and off we went. After stopping for a fishing license, we (Grandpa Dick, Dad, and Joel) landed the boat and headed out on the water. We didn’t have to go far to get to the first fishing spot, which yielded only a few small Croakers, so named because they make a noise when you hold them next to your ear. Actually, I think they always make the noise when out of the water, but you only hear it when they are next to your ear. Otherwise, they are much smarter than they look!

We moved from spot to spot and caught fish, but none of the larger Sheephead that we were seeking. We caught some small Sheephead and a few small Hardhead (like a catfish with poisonous spines on the fins and back), but no keepers. We did stay entertained by watching the birds and dolphins. The dolphins surfaced continually, and on occasion we would see one with a fish in its mouth. A few times they surfaced so close to the boat that we could hear the air coming out of their blowholes.

There were pelicans, cormorants, blue herons, terns, gulls, and little shorebirds that would run down to the water’s edge, eat at something on the rocks, then run up as the waves chased them, then run back down when the water receded. Very agile little critters! The pelicans were very friendly, and would come right up to the boat when we were releasing a fish, hoping to make a meal of it. Grandpa saw a Sea Turtle right by our boat, but neither Dad nor Joel were looking in the right direction during its brief appearance.

We finally found the big Sheephead we were after when the current started to move because of the tide. When we got to the right spot, we caught them one after another! They were probably mostly around 2-6 pounds (with the largest 21 inches in length) and we were able to keep our limits of five each. Wow do these fish fight! They also have very sharp spines and several drops of human blood were shed in the effort. We were using small “Ghost Shrimp” as bait on a hook with a pretty heavy sinker. They are soft biters and very hard fighters! Grandpa Dick says they are about the best eating fish around, so they should make some pretty good meals!

Mom and Grandma Gayle went shopping at some gift and clothing shops, went to the grocery store, had a quick lunch and took a short walk on the beach. Mom enjoyed sitting in a chair in the sun and reading in the afternoon, soaking up the sun after being cold the last few days.

The biggest event of the day was the grudge match on the tennis court between Dad and Joel. This long anticipated match finally took place on the courts of Port Aranasas in front of a sellout crowd. The first set was close all the way, with neither player leading by more than a game, but somebody had to win and Dad squeaked out a 6-4 victory. The second set was closer than the score indicates, with Dad winning 6-2. There were many fantastic points that exhibited tremendous skill and athleticism by both players and it was a shame that somebody had to lose. The loser paid for a treat at the Port Aransas DQ.

Dinner at Grandpa Dick’s was tasty and after that Grandpa, Dad and Joel took on the task of cleaning 15 Sheephead. It was a team effort that resulted in six bags of fillets that Grandpa will freeze and bring up north for us when he migrates in a month or so.

Day 2: San Antonio

It was a good night in the Days Inn Airport. Breakfast was adequate. Egg and sausage biscuits, cereal, and juice.

Dad and Joel had a spirited discussion about why mirrors transpose left and right, but not up and down. Dad's opinion is that if our eyes were arranged vertically and not horizontally, the mirror would transpose up and down, because if we lay horizontally, left and right are now up and down and they are transposed. Joel says that it still works when you close one eye, so that can't be true. Dad says that our brains are just wired that way. Mom says "eat your cereal before it gets soggy."

We drove to San Antonio (about 8 miles) and parked in a ramp. Our friendly GPS, the “Hertz NeverLost” guided us there. We had indicated our destination to be the Alamo. It successfully brought us right to the Alamo, but there were detours due to all the activities in town. The GPS not only guides us to our destination, but also enhances our self-esteem when we get there by stating "You Have Arrived!" That makes us feel good! It turns out we hit a big Alamo weekend because it’s the 175^th anniversary of the battle of the Alamo.

We were wondering what our GPS would say if we made a wrong turn, so we found out, because we had to drive around aimlessly looking for a place to park. We wondered if it would state in its monotonous tone “You Are Lost!” but instead, it politely reassured us that it was “Recalculating the Route.”

We decided to go up a Public Parking ramp – one of those corkscrew deals where you drive in a circle as you go up. The GPS informed us “Approaching Left Turn … Followed by Left Turn … Followed by Left Turn.” Very helpful!

We walked to the Alamo and there were lots of festivities because of the 175^th anniversary weekend. There were hundreds of costumed folks re-enacting various aspects of the time and culture. It was a pretty interesting tour, and at noon they re-enacted the attack by the Mexicans when the Alamo fell. It was complete with canons and gunshots, with smoke filling the air.

After a short lunch in a small café, it was time to walk the famous Riverwalk – San Antonio’s version of Canal Park and the Lakewalk. It couldn’t compare to Lake Superior, of course, but it was interesting. We took one of the narrated boat tours around part of the river, which is a man-made river off the natural San Antonio River. There are lots of things happening there, from shops to sidewalk cafes (lots of Mexican food) to bands.

Joel asked Cha-Cha and found that San Antonio is the second largest city in the US with a population of over a million. I find that hard to believe and will have to check this out. Can you believe everything you hear from Cha-Cha?

We took off for Port Aransas around 3pm and the drive was successful but uneventful. Lots of cacti, turkey vultures, hawks and farmland. Very flat country and very sparsely populated. Arriving in Port Aransas, we made our obligatory trip to Whataburger and stopped at the grocery store for breakfast and lunch supplies.

The house we are staying at belongs to the people who Grandpa Dick pays to park his camper in their yard. It is currently unoccupied, so we are able to rent it at a reasonable rate. It should be a comfy home away from home for the next few days!

Day 1: Traveling to Texas

It was a day of travel. Packing and getting ready in the morning, leaving for the Cities at noon, parking the car at the 'Park-N-Go' and getting to the airport about 3:00. Our flight left at 5:30, so there was time for a bite to eat (Quiznos) and a little relaxing at the airport.

Joel has a continual smile on his face, like he's really getting away with something. It was especially pronounced when we drove by Hermantown High School and he thought of all his beloved classmates suffering through school.

At the airport, they kept announcing those deals on the intercom where you could volunteer to give up your seat and take a flight the next day in exchange for a night in a hotel, some food vouchers, and Delta miles ($400 per person). We had mixed opinions about whether or not to take advantage of that situation! You can guess who thought what!

The flight was cramped, but uneventful. A small plane with only two seats on each side of the row. Arrived at 8:30. Took a shuttle to the Hertz rental place and got a car, but didn't know how to get to our hotel. Note to self: next time print directions from airport to hotel.

Abel and Carl: Thanks so much for watching over things at the house while we are gone. You are welcome to the food in the fridge. In particular, there is a half carton of soy milk that really shouldn't go to waste. Please drink and enjoy!

We called the hotel, but the receptionist's English skills were not quite adequate to give us directions. Fortunately, there was a GPS system in the car (which we didn't request or pay for). After a little fiddling, we got the right location entered and the little box talked us to our destination. First time any of us have used one of those! Very handy, but it definitely needs to do voice recognition. Typing an address is a royal pain!

We are now at the hotel. It seems clean enough, but is in a state of disrepair. A good place to get a good night's sleep, we hope! Goodnight to all!