Port Aransas

Port Aransas is described in the Lonely Planet: "The funkiest port on the coast is also a jammin' beach town". Since our car was already aimed south it made sense to head off there. T'was a cool drive down the i37, cartoon white clouds in a deep blue sky, aircon full on, and the radio locked on to a classic rock station (FM104.5 -- yeah, man!). Linda was plugged in to Google Maps on my Nexus 10 to act as my very own "Sat-Nag". Her navigating skills improved by an order of magnitude when she discovered that the little blue dot that intermittently kept up with us was, in fact, us. Somehow, even though the Nexus is not 3g enabled and the wi-fi wasn't on, the tablet knows where we are through GPS. To avoid Corpus Christi we veered left to Sinton then right and south to Aransas Pass. To the left of us was a wall-to-wall wind farm, giant wind turbines turning majestically as far as the eye could see. To the right, huge oil platforms and the DuPont refinery. As we passed those we came to the free ferry to Port Aransas.

Geographically, Port A is at the northern tip of a sandbar tens of miles long and known to the locals as "the island". Landwards is a huge bay and wildlife preserve dominated by the town of Corpus Christi. Corpus connects to the island by a huge causeway in the south and a row of ferries in the north (so the big ships can get to the refinery at the eastern end of the bay).

While we were here we drove the full circle around the bay starting and ending at our little motel, the Captains

Cabin, just outside the ferry entrance. Corpus Christi itself is a charming waterfront city dominated at the northern end by a WWII aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington (now a floating museum). South of Port A on the seaward side is miles and miles of empty beach, although we understand from the locals that that during the previous Labor Day weekend it was covered in wall-to-wall cars, pickups, beach tents, and RVs.

As far as things to do there's a) drive around and soak up the atmosphere, and b) sample the numerous local bars and restaurants. For the first option, we've tried the beach (but frazzled in the 98F Texan humidity), drove around the bay stopping for coffee and snacks as needed, and drove NE to the historic town of Goliad where Santa Anna murdered 350 Texian prisoners just after the Alamo. We had lunch at the

Couthouse Square, a sleepy, picturesque town centre featuring a grand old 1894 courthouse and a hanging tree. Evening saw us talking to the locals in the quirky little bars. Last night we made it to The Gaff, a shacky little place where the patrons leave messages on the ceiling tiles and the only place in Texas so far that sells draught cider. Linda got talking to one old boy at the bar, an ex-marine whose ancestry goes back to the Kickapoo tribe. The couple who I talked to were your usual up front Texians: she didn't approve of our Royal Family and I had no respect for Sarah Palin and her beloved Tea Party. We both, however, agreed on a cap on welfare spending and got along fine after that (I can see Steve with his head in his hands, glad he didn't come with us). Eveyone seemed impressed that we'd been to so many other countries: I gather not many Texians get out of the State much. We ordered a huge pizza but had to take a lot of it home to have for breakfast the next day.

Tomorrow we leave but therein lies a bit of a problem. I'll explain in the next post.