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.