Birding
Because of the brutal heat we’ve been having, we’ve not taken as many walks as we’d normally have taken, but we have managed to go out to the bird-watching pavilion almost every day. Whoever designed the pavilion did a great job. It sits about fifty feet off the edge of the bay, over a wide swath of marsh grass. With the way it’s built and with its location, it always has a nice breeze, so when the air temps are nearly unbearable in the sun or back on land, it’s much more pleasant out in the pavilion.
Chelsea and I have taken to going out there and sitting on the benches for several hours at a time, holding our business and planning meetings out there. The other day, during a low tide, we saw several stilts, six roseate spoonbills, a great egret, a tri-colored heron, a great blue heron, several ibis, and a few clapper rails, all in one small section of the marsh.
There are several clapper rails that hang out near the pavilion, so we’ve gotten a great close-up look at them. There’s even a mom with several babies, and we’ve gotten to watch her fishing for the babies, then breaking up the food for them.
We watch the great egrets, clapper rails, tri-colored herons, and great blue herons fishing in the water at the edge of the water, and we’ve been keeping our eye on a stilt sitting on her nest. Chelsea made a comment on Sunday, when we saw the tableau of all those gorgeous birds, that she sometimes feels like we are living in a magazine page from the Audubon society or National Geographic.
Joys of privacy and air conditioning; getting things done
We are still appreciative on an hourly basis of the air conditioning and private bathrooms we’ve got now, compared to the awfulness of being in the heat and sharing hot, steamy, mosquito-ridden, not-very-clean public bathrooms. We’ve had quiet days to work, and we’ve gotten an amazing amount done.
We’ve taken down our “sister-sites” as we realized a few months ago that I can’t possibly write for all those sites, keep up on our blogs, and write the book that’s been underway. We’ve decided instead to post all those articles to our original Traveling Roses website. Chelsea finished that job today.
We are also in the midst of finishing up some articles that have been underway for a while now, and we are looking for magazines and newspapers where we can publish them. We hope to submit as many as eight articles by Friday, as we really need to create some income for ourselves (our rent income has disappeared, and an alternative is very much needed).
In the news
We were quite surprised on Friday to hear a knock on the door and discover a reporter from the local newspaper looking for us. I was so tired I’d fallen asleep on the couch while reading, and Chelsea was in the bedroom trying to take a nap, so we postponed the interview.
Apparently someone from the campground had emailed the editor of the newspaper, telling him about us, so the editor sent Lauren over to interview us. We arranged for a Friday night interview, and spent almost two and a half hours talking to Lauren. Lauren is nineteen, studying business in college.
Since it’s summer, she’s working three jobs to get enough spending money together for the next year at school – she doesn’t want to have to both work and study if she can help it. As a result, she’s working at the Tropics, a local restaurant, she’s lifeguarding at the city pool, and she’s working the Port Lavaca Wave as a reporter. She’s a completely delightful young woman.
The article comes out in the paper today. Lauren did a great job on writing it, and her turnaround was amazing. She hopes to give us a copy of the paper today; we’re having dinner with her uncle and her mom.
Though we’ve asked around, we still haven’t found out who submitted our names to the paper!
Boating
Last week Roger had been telling us about his boat, and much to our delight, he decided to bring his brother’s boat down to Port Lavaca for the week. He arrived here around four on Sunday, had to work all day yesterday (the guys work eleven-hour days M-W and eight hours on Thursdays), but still came home and got the boat ready to go out Monday after work.
Chris had laundry to do, but Josh and Chelsea and I joined Roger for a short fishing expedition. Because the bay was really choppy from the high winds, we trailered the boat eight miles down the road to a quieter launch site. The guys had their fishing poles ready, and we wandered from spot to spot, hoping for trout or redfish.
Deciding to wait a few minutes to see how the tides were going, Roger took us out on the main bay. What a wild ride that was! He cranked up the speed, and we were hitting those waves hard. We all got wet, and I spotted Chelsea and Josh up front laughing when they got wet from a particularly hard wave. We loved it…
Chelsea and I didn’t fish, but we learned a lot about fishing by watching carefully and by listening to Roger (Roger is a natural teacher – when he loves something, he loves to share it, and he explains things well). We dearly loved being quietly out on the water, watching a gorgeous sunset, and watching all the shore birds fishing at sunset.
We finished just after sunset, feeling far more peaceful and relaxed than when we had started!