Blue Goose ~ Day 218

December 31, 2014 ~ Port Lavaca, TX to Jamaica Beach (Galveston), TX

I was up early and went to a McDonald's 1/2 mile up the street to use the WiFi, get coffee, a breakfast burrito and wait for daylight. Sadly, there have been few sunrises lately.

Two refuges on the Gulf before Galveston are accessible to the public: San Bernard and Brazoria. There is a third refuge, Big Boggy NWR, that is "only open to the public for waterfowl hunting." Hmm..

Pied-billed Grebe at San Bernard NWR - TX

I went to San Bernard and skipped Brazoria. When the habitat is similar, I feel I get the general impression of what goes on. I drove several miles through San Bernard, never seeing another car, flushing sparrows which would fly from or across the road, dive into the grasses and stay there. I think they were mostly Savannahs and feel I am slowly figuring out what is where and how they differ in the eye markings, streaks, bills, length of tails, behaviors....


This is a coastal refuge with a Black Vulture guarding the gate and watery marshes and ditches and fields. This habitat then rises to what are called the Colombia bottomlands: 

WWW.FWS.GOV 

These dense woods are made up of massive live oaks, green ash, hackberry, and pecan trees that follow the region’s rivers and sloughs. The forests undergo seasonal flooding and are essential habitat for wintering and migrating passerines. Exhausted from their flight across the Gulf, neotropical migratory birds depend on the bottomlands as a place to rest, feed and refuel before continuing their migration. The bottomland hardwood forests are in the floodplain of the Brazos, San Bernard and Colorado Rivers...

And estimated "239 million birds pass through the Colombia bottomlands each spring."

San Bernard NWR - TX

I knew the route north of here from a trip in the spring of 2011 and knew I could get a ferry from Galveston Island to the Bolivar Peninsula. These are long narrow barrier beaches with Galveston Bay on the west and the Gulf of Mexico on the east. Most of the homes / beach houses are built on stilts and must be wonderful retreats with the cooler sea breezes for those fortunate enough to own or rent them in the hot humid summers. Cars are parked underneath, but the living quarters are on second or third floors, with balconies and porches.

 EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. By contrast, the second-deadliest storm to strike the United States, the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, caused more than 2,500 deaths, and the deadliest storm of recent times, Hurricane Katrina, claimed the lives of approximately 1,800 people.

Galveston has eight to ten miles of hotels, restaurants, fishing piers, an amusement park and gift shops on Seawall fronting the Gulf and which is actually the seawall built to protect the city after the hurricane.

As I drove north, it was getting late and I knew there wasn't much after the ferry so got a motel in Galveston. After all, it was New Years Eve. And found a little BYOB, elegantly appointed Italian restaurant (Sapori Restaurante) with growing pains but possibilities. The sauce was tasty but needed thinning and less added to the pasta by a third; the walnuts in the pasta should have been toasted; the asparagus cut in half; the salad  was refreshing but needed chopping; there should have been a butter choice instead of only olive oil with spices. The dessert was delicious.

Jeez...there is a part of me that thinks reviewing restaurant food is pathetic....

I almost stopped at the bar in the motel (no food; just alcohol) to get a Bailey's but then didn't. I really  am a social drinker...mostly.

Galveston Island - TX (grand)

Galveston Island - TX (modest)