We got up a bit early today and had breakfast and got ready to go to the Birding Center. We thought there would be another guided walk today, but when we arrived we discovered that the guided walk had been cancelled. So we walked around the boardwalks on our own.
This is a map that shows the layout of the boardwalks around the center.
Once again we took over 200 photos at the Birding Center, so I will just show you a couple of the more interesting ones.
These two White Ibises are having a bit of a squabble.
I watched this alligator for about 20 minutes as he lay in hiding watching his potential next meal. I am convinced that he was not hungry because the Pied Billed Grebe and the Tri Colored Heron passed within grabbing distance but the alligator never took the opportunity.
We watched the Pelicans fishing for their meal. It is starting to get foggy, that is why the photos are a little washed out.
We watched this Great Blue Heron fly in and land on a post.
This Great Egret was kind enough to stretch its wings for us.
After our visit to the Birding Center, we resumed our search for the elusive Pelican Sand Sculpture. Our sources told us it was in Andy Bowie Park so we paid the admission fee of $4.00 and went in to search. The guy in the booth at the entrance gate had no idea what we were talking about when we asked him where the sand sculpture was. It was very foggy at this part of the Island.
You can just see the tops of the nearby condo towers peeking through the fog.
We never did find the Pelican Sand Sculpture, so we will have to do some further research before our next attempt to locate it. Perhaps it fell victim to vandals and has been destroyed. We will give it one more attempt in the next few days to try and locate it.
We drove further North to Beach Access #5. I wanted to check out the laneway there to see if it would be suitable for using to drive our car onto the beach. A lot of the beach access points are not suitable for anything less than a 4 wheel drive vehicle, but I was told that at Access #5 it would be suitable for getting our 2 wheel drive car down onto the beach, and upon inspection by me, I found that it is hard packed sand and so we will come back here on a day when it is not foggy and go for a drive along the beach.
This is Beach Access #5 as seen on a foggy day. Not a good day for photos.
The seagulls thought it was a nice day.
The horse back riders seemed to be enjoying their ride along the beach despite the foggy conditions.
Back at our trailer in the KOA Kampground, we read our Kindle e-reader books till it was time to start the BBQ for dinner.
The fog set in heavy just before sunset, so there are no sunset photos this evening. I BBQ’d hamburgers for dinner. Now that I have had some practice, I am going to step it up a notch in a couple of days and BBQ some steaks. Tonights hamburgers were delicious.
We were worried that the fog was going to obscure our view from our patio of the fireworks this evening, but around 9pm the fog cleared and at midnight we had a front row seat to the firework display put on by the South Padre Island Chamber of Commerce. They anchor a large barge in the center of the bay to light the fireworks off from.
Our camera takes the worst possible photos at night, there are several dozen automatic settings and of course the ever intimidating manual settings, but I have never figured out or taken the time to learn how to take night photos, or more precisely, photos of fireworks at night. Anyways, here are a few samples of the firework show to ring in the New Year, SPI Texas Style.
HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you from South Padre Island Texas.
To see all of our photos from today, you can click on this link to our FLICKR site.
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