The Granger Lake Chapter Nearing Its End

This post is a mixed bag of activities that we have been constantly on the move to do.  There has been plenty of volunteer work to fulfill our obligation to earn the right to occupy an RV pad, with utilities, but we also have been taking in the sights of parts of Texas that we have never seen before.

Between drought, disease, infestations and plain-old old age, the trees around here have been hit hard.  The hard and prolonged freeze of 2021, when the Texas power grid failed, didn't help either.  But beginning in 2022 hundreds of saplings of various oaks and other hardwoods were delivered to Granger Lake.  A lot of work has gone into maintaining these saplings and removing the dead and dying so that the new could be set in.  We played a small part in the bigger plan by planting six oaks and one cypress in one of the three campgrounds of Granger Lake.

It's hard to see but there are three oak trees, protected from browsing by wire cages, planted in this field next to the campground host site.  Of note is the the tree in the foreground, it is planted adjacent to the stump of the tree it is replacing.  It was a large oak we estimated to have been well over one hundred years old.

The tree in the foreground of this photo is a cypress and planted in memoriam.  The brother of one of our rangers had succumbed to COVID and this tree was dedicated to his remembrance.

The planting of these few trees was an experience.  A thin layer of soil lay on top of some of the most dense clay I have ever experienced.  It took mechanized equipment to coax out enough lumps of clay to plant the root balls.  Those lumps of clay took on the shape of the bucket of the excavator that dug them out and breaking them up to fill the hole back in took the better part of the day.  Then came caging that keeps the browsers at bay.  I've put protective wire around saplings before but never anything as robust as what we used here.  It took two of us to unroll the wire and a pair of bolt cutters to cut the wire to length.

But this post is more about seeing the sites than doing the work.  Our off days are Thursday thru Sunday and that gives us time to do long weekends.  Now that it has warmed up we're taking advantage of that and spending time on Texas' south gulf coast.  First stop, Corpus Christi.

Corpus Christi has done a good job developing its water line.  Their marina and adjacent park are case in point.

Corpus Christi skyline from the marina.

Definitely one of our favorite new places to eat, Landry's

Corpus Christi is old, it received its name in 1519, had its first but short lived colony in 1747 and then permanently occupied starting in 1839.  There is a lot of cool, old architecture around town and one old building downtown had been repurposed into a live music/event center/restaurant.  The House of Rock.

This place took up a large part of the city block it was on but none of these things is what caught our attention.  What brought us to their door was that they made authentic, Chicago-style, deep dish pizza!  When done right, there's nothing better.  But finding it done right is a challenge outside of the Chicago metroplex.  We tried places that claim to be deep dish but we have more often than not been disappointed.  Our first clue that the House of Rock might be the real deal was that it took a solid hour to make and cook it.

The hour-long wait for our pie wasn't because it was a packed house.

The wait was definitely because that is how long it takes to cook this beast.
We ate off this thing for three days!

With that done it was time to get our touristing on.  For being such a small city (pop abt 318,000) it has a lot to offer.  We visited a World War II aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington on our first full day in town.  We have visited several of these floating museums around the country and this one was the only one that had used what appeared to us as every square inch of the ship.  We climbed a lot of stairs, ships stairs.  Metal treads, open, very narrow and very steep and so many of them.  Our step counters said we had climbed 15 floors by the time we exited the ship.

Got an early morning start before the sun turned the ship into an oven.

From this position you can see many of the static aircraft displays on the flight deck.

Walking up the entrance ramp the Lexington makes for an impressive site.

Stem to stern and keel to crow's nest there were stairs, stairs, and more stairs.

It took a good chunk of the day to take in the Lexington.  It wasn't just big but it was also well endowed with displays of historical significance, story boards, and hundreds and hundreds of models of incredible detail.  We were enjoying taking it all in but our plans to visit the Texas State Aquarium were getting cut into.  We had to call it and move on.

We're spoiled when it comes to aquariums.  Having lived in the Atlanta area when the Georgia Aquarium was built, and being annual pass holders we experienced a world class operation frequently.  There have been visits to other aquariums around the country, some were very well done and others left a little to be desired.  We had never heard about the one in Corpus Christi but we were going to find out which kind it was.  Happily it was one that impressed us.  It was really well done and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there.

One of the dolphins in the show seemed to take particular delight in splashing the audience.
Everybody in the first three rows were soaked before the show was over.

The aquarium featured more than just things that swim.
This brightly colored character walked right up to me and peered down the lens.

All of the exhibits in this aquarium were very well done.

Having taken in the "city stuff" it was time to get a little deeper into nature.  And where better to do this while in Corpus Christi than Padre Island.

On a map it may look like a thin strip of sand but in person 
there is more than the eye can take in

It is a number of miles to get inside the national park and to 
the park headquarters, but worth the drive.

A sunny day in March and a warm gulf breeze made for a perfect 
break on the visitor center deck overlooking dunes and beach.

Pristine white sand and blue-green water.

We briefly spent some time talking with park rangers about volunteering and had a really good conversation with an off-duty volunteer campground host.  After the talk with the host we know for sure that we want nothing to do with volunteering here or anywhere else near a body of saltwater.  We were shown around this host's fifth-wheel and truck.  He pointed out equipment, some of which was only 4 months old, that were so corroded that they looked twenty years old.  And he said that was in spite of washing down his rig weekly!  Ouch, no way am I putting my equipment in that environment.

As you head east and cross the causeway from Corpus Christi to the barrier islands you have to choose to either turn north or south.  To the south is 113 mile long Padre Island.  The worlds longest barrier island. To the north is 18 mile long Mustang Island.  While Padre Island is mostly national park, Mustang Island is mostly state park.  We took it all in.  The day after Padre Island we returned to the causeway and turned north to the state park.  Neither of us can figure it out but we ended up without a single picture of that whole day.

We sure enjoyed our long weekend in Corpus Christi but it is time to get back to work for our last hurrah at Granger Lake.