2022 Condo Trip, Part Four: Winding Down

 

 This is part four of the trip narrative; you should read them in order. Click on this link to go to the beginning, then click on "Newer Post" to move through to the end.  (And here's a link to all the pictures from the trip.)

So there had been some discussion of Beeville's relationship to NAS-CCAD, and I decided that we would take the old highway back to San Antonio. That would take us through Beeville, and I hadn't been that way in many years, probably since I-37 opened decades ago. We left Corpus early enough to get home and collect Carly from the kennel before 2pm, which was my goal. Our drive took us north on Padre Island, across Aransas Pass on the ferry (one of only two, it appears, still operating in Texas; the other being at Point Bolivar, near Galveston), and through towns that echo almost emptily in my memory: Sinton, Karnes City, Poth, Floresville. It was like seeing an old TV show that you know you've seen before, but remember nothing about. With one exception: a hall in Karnes City that I recognise as having been to, but I couldn't say why. I suspect it has something to do with my ex-wife's family. They were from down that way, though the ones I knew best all lived in San Antonio, if not even farther north.

Nancy & Jeff stayed with us four nights. During that time we spent the hot parts of the days holed up in the house, mostly, though Nancy did get interested in the history & architecture of the grand palaces littering the curbsides in Monte Vista. Jeff was in the midst of reading an early Tom Clancy novel, and as any fan of that genre knows, such books cannot easily be put down. It was achingly difficult for him, I'm sure, to lay his phone aside long enough to join us for dinner. (I sometimes suffer from the same "social" affliction.)

I had had the rare foresight to call earlier in the week to reserve a Friday-night table on the patio at La Fonda, our favourite local restaurant, and we got lucky, weather-wise: dry, not too hot. It was one of the great meals of recent history (even though the waiter got my order wrong; but a good frozen margarita will cover a host of sins), and one of the most relaxing.

Not Good Enough

We did make a few excursions around town before they had to go back to Colorado: on Saturday to Mission Espada, for example, because it's a San Antonio thing to do and Nancy wanted to take a picture of a nearby street sign. (I showed her my picture of it, but that wasn't good enough: she wanted her own picture to send to people. You understand how that is: you don't want to send it out and have to say you didn't actually go there yourself....) So we got the picture and spent a pleasant half hour or so at Espada, then drove up to the 18th-Century acequia, which was closed but visible from the street; and on to Mission ... I forget which; whichever one is the next to the north. Either Concepción or San Juan. I don't remember which is which, and I'm too lazy to look it up. You wanna know? Try Google Maps.

Our next destination was Blue Star. When we got there all the shops were already closed, but our main reason for going was dinner at the craft brewery located there. As Texas craft breweries go, this one is ancient; it's been there for more than 25 years. They did not accomplish that remarkable longevity by savvy management of the restaurant side of the business. The phrase pinche servicio sounded in my head in the voice of a friend from The Old Days. It got better after we trapped a young man named Alfonso, whom I took to be a bartender, and got him to wait on us. There were a couple of other servers making rare appearances in the dining room, but no one reliable. Sherry got Pig Pie, while I just ordered the loaded nachos. Both were good, though the nachos could easily have been better (i.e., they needed more cheese). Everyone enjoyed their drinks, too, as one would expect. (I had water; I was driving.)

Ooh! So close!

On Sunday we headed over to the Winchester for the final day of competition in the English Premier League. Liverpool would have won the league if Aston Villa's defense had come back on the pitch after halftime at City; Tottenham made sure they finished ahead of archrivals Arsenal; and (yay!) Burnley got relegated while Leeds stayed up. Afterwards we lazed around the house, mostly, until around four in the afternoon, when we suddenly got ambitious and drove downtown for a little sightseeing. We caught a bit of the Alamo grounds before its 5:30 closing -- it's showing signs of significant improvement in the story it tells since the Daughters of the Republic of Texas got relieved of custody (ironically, an event neatly glossed over in the story's telling). We then strolled over to the Riverwalk and down to La Villita, seeing the chapel where Sherry & I got married ("the scene of the crime," said Nancy, but we love her anyway), then decided to go for dinner at Schilo's, which has the best German food in town, and both Sherry and Jeff are particularly partial to that cuisine. Unfortunately, Schilo's has changed its hours and now closes after lunch. Sad. I was all set for their split pea soup and some kind of sausage or sandwich. 

None of the other downtown restaurants appealed to us, so we decided to try Paesano's in Alamo Heights. (I know, they have a location on the River, but A Certain Person didn't want to walk the block and a half to get there.) We called on the way over but couldn't get an answer; so we ended up going to Pesto's instead, which is always good. (And it turns out that they now have a location downtown as well, but it would have been two whole blocks to walk there.) And they have a Mediterranean salad very similar to the one I would have ordered at Paesano's, the only difference being that they batter their chicken in Romano cheese, while Paesano's uses Parmesan. Just different enough to be distinct. Mwah. About the only major difference is the bread: Paesano's offers a selection of four different breads: one very good, two excellent, and one outstanding; while Pesto has recently changed its bread offering; sadly, not for the better. What they serve now is merely very good, whereas before it was good enough to be The Best Reason to go there. Now the rest of the food has to fill that role.

We did do other things besides eat while they were here: we played board games, watched some TV (neither of them had ever watched some of our favourite shows, so now they have an idea of what Mom and Schitt's Creek are all about), talked about literature and art and philosophy, and played with the dog. All in all, the best things to do with our time.

2022 Condo Trip, Part Three: Wednesday & Thursday

 This is part three of the trip narrative; you should read them in order. Click on this link to go to the beginning, then click on "Newer Post" to move through to the end.  (And here's a link to all the pictures from the trip.)

We just had to go back to the beach. I got a couple of tacos to go from La Isla, the pretty good Mexican restaurant on the highway near our condo, then we drove down to the National Seashore again. This time we filled up three garbage bags with detritus from the beach, so it felt like we had done some good in the world. Considering how much litter was left behind, not so much....

We stayed out there for a few hours; Nancy and Sherry saw a green turtle in the water near shore, but otherwise it was an uneventful morning. Very relaxing. Jeff stayed behind at the condo for some Me-Time. I spent the whole morning reading the Grey Man novel I've got checked out. (Q.v. Tom Clancy, in Part Four of this post.)

We grabbed sandwiches from Subway for lunch at the condo, then sat around relaxing until late afternoon, when we all put on our bowling shirts and went to the lanes on the grounds of the Naval Air Station. We were the only people in the place, which was kind of nice. Nancy and Sherry bowl about as well as they did when we first started the Once-a-Year Bowling League, but Jeff & I have deteriorated. I used to bowl around 135, year in and year out. The past couple of years, though, I can't even break 100. Now that the arthritis in my knee has gotten to be a problem, it's really hard to get down low enough to release the ball the way I used to. So I've had to change the motion I use for this sport. It helped, a little: in the first game I bowled a 62, but on the second game I got up to 89. Still kind of embarrassing, but not mortifying.

For dinner we went to the little Thai place right by the entrance to our subdivision. The green curry there is as good as what we get back home, but the other dish we got, mixed vegetables with chicken, was a little disappointing, just because the chicken seemed kind of dry. But otherwise, it was a pleasant meal: good service, good prices. And we had plenty of leftovers to bring back for a late-night snack.

Games night at the condo was a version of Canasta called Salsa. I generally avoid playing card games other than solitaire, and now I remember why. Of course, that aversion is easier to exercise when there are foursomes available without my participation.

Thursday, our last day in town, started with a solo trip down to La Isla for some tacos de machacado con huevo a la mexicana and not-bad coffee, then a group excursion to the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and Nature. This is, unfortunately, the time of year when local schools, desperate to keep the kids engaged before summer break, take all their field trips. With the exception implied by that, the museum was interesting enough to occupy a good bit of our day. It had small exhibits on Texas geology; an exhibit focussed on the 1542 wreck of three Spanish ships on Padre Island; local history; and dinosaurs. There may have been other exhibits -- there was quite a lot, I think, of the building that I didn't get to before it was time for lunch, which we had nearby at Brewster Street Ice House, a restaurant and dance hall just beyond the Harbor Bridge's elevated approach ramp. It was pretty well past the lunch rush, so that was good. The food was traditional American -- burgers and such -- and I indulged myself by actually ordering a chicken-fried steak. Usually I think about it, then order something more nutritionally responsible, but this time I followed through, mostly because they bill it as "award-winning." I think it must have been a county-wide competition, at best, but there's really no such thing as bad chicken-fried steak, is there? My dog says there isn't.

Olympic (detail)

Next we went to the Art Museum of South Texas, which is currently free to visit because of some corporate sponsorship or something; I didn't really hear the explanation. I'm tempted to make remarks like "you get what you pay for," but the fact is the exhibits that were open for viewing were interesting. I was particularly taken with a painting called Olympic, depicting a deepwater shipwreck (it felt familiar; I may have seen it last time I was here, hundreds of years ago), and the small collection of Western Art. There's also a visually intriguing 8-foot-tall shard-like sculpture of black-painted bronze that, for some reason, is tucked away in a back room where no one but museum staff will see it unless they're lost.

I call it "the shard"

A lot of the art on display is modern. Call it what you will -- and artsy-fartsy types have names for every type of art, even if their categories seem to include only a single work -- it's basically meaningless crap to me: beach chairs collected into a pair of big balls was okay in a whimsical way; a boat made out of reeds (it looks like) and a "gravity table" were at least mildly interesting for their form. Some of the large canvases were attractive even if devoid of readily discernible meaning. That abstract kind of painting always seems to me to only exist for decoration, not meaning: "We just need a reddish painting to set off the color of the Lazy-Boy." 

There's also a pair of rooms dedicated to Spanish Colonial art. The first room contains paintings from the actual Spanish Colonial period, mostly religious themes. The second contains what I'd call a modern take on it, or Mexican folk-art: bright colored painting of religious themes heavily leaning toward pre-Christian styles. It's not bad, it's just irrelevant to me; kind of like Plains Indian art, language and religion. It's nothing to do with my own culture except by the slightest of impact. If there are aspects of it that truly have meaning, they gradually get absorbed into my cultural heritage, like breakfast tacos or cowboy hats. If not, they remain as exotic affectations. 

Oh, and there's yet another Dale Chihuly assemblage of seaweed-shaped glass, such as can be seen in any wannabe-arty institution with enough money. I really wish he would have a third idea.

Dinner that night was random. I had the leftover curry from the night before; I don't know what anyone else had. 

2022 Condo Trip, Part Two: Monday & Tuesday

This is part two of the trip narrative; you should read them in order. If you haven't read Part One, click on this link.  (And here's a link to all the pictures from the trip.)

 The Laredo Taco Company is the name of a chain of convenience-store taco stands around South Texas. Being something of an aficionado of the taco, I felt no compunction about pooh-poohing the untried quality of their wares. But then a neighbour of mine, seeing one of their locations in passing, reminisced fondly about the old days when she and her colleagues would get lunch there, to go. Having spotted no real taquerías in the immediate vicinity of our condo, I decided this was the time to give it a try.

To my surprise, it was not simply a heat lamp over a supply of ready-made tacos bound in foil, but a Subway-style collection of ingredients with a grill at the ready. I ordered a bacon-and-egg taco on corn, and a potato-and-egg taco, also on corn, with cheese on both. My first hint that this breakfast would confirm my prejudices came when the woman behind the counter looked at me in amazement and said, disbelievingly, "On corn?" I assured her that was what I had said. It provoked an urgent whispered conference with her associate while I went to the register and paid.

I collected my tacos in a brown-paper bag and went back to the condo for breakfast. On unwrapping the tacos, I found that their corn tortillas were the poor-quality dry five-inch circles of masa one gets in plastic pouches at HEB. They are too small for the use to which Laredo Taco Company puts them, so each taco had two tortillas enclosing it. (Double the deficiency.) As concerns the quantity of filling, that is a point in their favour. As for the quality, it was reasonably good. The eggs were cooked very nicely, and they and the additives were plentiful. But wouldn't you think that you could tell the difference, by taste if not appearance, between potatoes and bacon? I could not. And the bag, I found, did not include any kind of salsa, which made for a serious lack. (There probably were salsa options available at the shop, but I didn't notice any.) All in all, a dissatisfying breakfast, but I may try them again in a day or two, with flour tortillas and a search for condiments. At least the service was reasonably good and the price was not outrageous. Besides, if there aren't any other taco options, I'll be desperate.

Having thus fortified myself, I was able to cart this menagerie of people down the road to the beach in the National Seashore, where we spent the rest of the morning. The park service gives out garbage bags at the visitors' center, to encourage users to clean up little patches of beach around them. We took one, and had it full inside of an hour. Next time we'll take more, as there's plenty of trash washed up from Points South along the Padre Island strand. (The park ranger says that's where most of it comes from.) We set up our new beach umbrella (not the one we bought in San Antonio and left sitting in our garage, but the one we bought to replace it) and put out a kind of plastic rug under it, weighted down by sand in the pockets provided for that purpose, and made good use of the water and the beach for the rest of the morning. Nancy even saw a sea turtle -- a smallish one -- in the water. 

We grabbed food to go from Subway and relaxed at our condo for the rest of the day, until dinner at Doc's, a two-storey restaurant that has, at some point in the past fifty years, joined Snoopy's out on the island facing our back deck. Personally, I prefer Doc's to Snoopy's: it offers table service and the margaritas are better. And it offers live music upstairs, which I enjoyed. (I'm often surprised by the fact that so much live music is geared toward people who came of age before Friends debuted.) 

We dragged our sated bellies back to the condo just in time to see the sun sink behind Snoopy's, then turned our attention to the games table. Monday night we cracked open Scattergories, which Nancy & Jeff had never played (and Sherry and I hadn't played in decades), and went through five rounds. Sherry won one round convincingly; she and I drew the rest, or won by no more than a single point.

one of the sea turtles

Our plan for Tuesday was to go first to the State Aquarium, and then the local museum of science and history. We got out to North Beach just before 11 in the morning, and ended up staying at the aquarium until almost five PM. It consists of two main exhibits: the Gulf and the (new) Caribbean halls, plus some exterior exhibits on particular animals: dophins, otters, rays, turtles, etc. 

We saw the dolphin show first. I found myself wondering if those animals, who had all been in the aquarium at least 15 years (one, twice that long) felt any sense of imprisonment, or if they were like dogs, happy to be kept as a pet. (I also wonder why it is that all the trainers -- presumably a position of some glamour in the hierarchy of the aquarium, are female, but let's not go there.) Next, we went to the Turtle Talk, and heard (through an irritatingly static-y headset) about the various rescue turtles in the aquarium. They only keep the ones that are too seriously injured to release into the wild, and have five on hand now. One has air bubbles trapped under her shell and can't descend in the water; another has only one flipper remaining after getting tangled in fishing line. I forget what injuries the others have sustained, but I'm thankful that there's a place where they can at least live out their lives unthreatened.

Nancy and Sherry went to see a film about octopi that afternoon. I was in the Gulf section, watching people in front of the oil-platform exhibit, when I got a text that said "We are going to see the octopus movie. Go through the gift shop." So when they closed the theater doors and the movie started I was in the gift shop, trying to figure out why Nancy considered it a Must-See part of the aquarium. (It definitely isn't.) It sounded afterwards like the octopus movie was a highlight of our visit, though; or at least, was for them & would have been for me.

Dinner Tuesday night was at a little Mexican place just outside the subdivision we're in, a place called Isla. Good service, good prices, way too much food. I thought the seasonings were a little heavy-handed, but nothing really to bitch about, damn it. None of us was able to finish our plates. (We did, though, finish our margaritas....)

We came back to play a few rounds of Hoopla before switching to Scattergories. It almost came to blows when Jeff insisted on credit for his answer to "things that are sticky": A pointed stick. ("Ask Ali, what's stickier than a pointed stick?" I didn't get the reference, but can imagine what it's about. But I still insisted that a pointed stick is NOT "sticky.") In return, he argued against my later answer to "countries that start with O" --  Oesterreich -- but that was just petty revenge: if you don't use the umlaut, it starts with O. (And if you do, it starts with Ö, and isn't that an 'O'?) Anyway, we all got over it and played probably three rounds of the game. Sherry won one round, and we tied once. She was all like "I finally won one," as though it had never happened, like I win all the time. I don't, but she like to feel oppressed. I'm not saying it's her fault, I'm just saying I blame her.

THE ADVENTURE RESUMES: Condo Trip 2022

This is Part One. Please read them in order. All the pictures from the entire trip are available here. 

Sunset over Laguna Madre from our condo's deck

 A stroke of good luck: Nancy's flight was 3 minutes late; Jeff's was 11 minutes late. So they each arrived in San Antonio at exactly the same time, from opposite sides of the country. It being just after lunchtime, we made our first stop at Beto's Alt-Mex, not far from the airport, for some excellent fish tacos (and something else, also excellent, for the member of our party who doesn't care for fish), then headed off down the highway for the coast.

Corpus Christi skyline

I looked on every website I could think of for interesting things staged between San Antonio and Corpus Christi. There are none. The South Texas Plain sweeps relentlessly to the Gulf without a pause for interest, or history, or culture, or even whimsy. The only thing remotely worth investigating is the Lipantitlan Battlefield, about 30 miles west of Corpus, where the Spanish in the 1780s -- and later, the Mexicans -- erected a sorry excuse for a fortress (one historian compared it unfavourably to a "second-rate hog pen") to exercise control over the area, when sovereignty was threatened by outsiders or, later, revolution. In 1835 a detachment from the Texian revolutionary forces at Goliad, flush with a small victory there, came to Lipantitlan to push out the small Mexican garrison, who happened to be away at the time. The next day, the returning Mexican forces attacked the Texians, who had superior weaponry, and suffered a small defeat before retreating into Mexico and leaving only the garrison at Béxar within the borders of what is now Texas. (Later, of course, that garrison would surrender and retreat, after which a major army would march north under Santa Anna in a doomed effort to exact vengeance and re-establish control.)

There is absolutely nothing left of the fortifications at Lipantitlan, but that didn't stop us from standing there in the tiny state park and speculating knowledgeably about Texas history and military strategies. It was a nice diversion on the otherwise-dull three-hour drive to the Island.

We got to our condo a couple of hours later than planned, because of those two stops, and found that the registration paperwork left for us was incorrect. Office closed until Monday, so won't worry about it until then. Friday evening we drove over to Snoopy's for dinner. That's a seafood place that stands on an island bordering the Intracoastal Canal. The name, in gigantic letters on the roof facing our condo across Laguna Madre, makes it kind of a landmark for owners at Puente Vista. It's traditional to eat there at least once every time we come to town. Sometimes it's especially good. Last time I was here, 3 years ago with Mike, we were there for sunset, which, from a table on the back deck, was spectacular; this time, a little earlier in the day, and from a table in the darkest corner of the dining room, right under a loudspeaker announcing whose orders were ready, it was less wonderful. But the margaritas were adequate for requirements, and I controlled myself by ordering a Greek salad with a mediocre crab cake added. No one was seriously dissatisfied, so I suppose that counts as a win. 

The rest of the evening was spent on our back porch, staring out across the Lagoon and solving all the world's problems; something we do as well as anyone.

Saturday started with breakfast at a Mexican restaurant a little way down the island. The food was pretty good (I'll give it three and a half jalapeños, out of 5), as was the value (also three and a half); the ambience was a little on the loud side (two and a half jalapeños) and the service was very good until we were ready for the check, at which point it ground to a halt (two jalapeños). Still, I'd go back. That was followed by  three hours glued to the television while Liverpool scraped past Chelsea in the FA Cup Final (6-5 on penalties). We'd planned to watch it at a bar, but couldn't find one that was open before noon. Apparently a city of 300,000 is too small for that level of opportunity to drink. Our plans were saved when it was discovered that Nancy's Disney-Plus subscription includes ESPN+. And she had brought her Fire Stick.

I don't know what that is, but it worked.

Three hundred thousand is not too small, however, to offer a good distillery, which I'd read about in Texas Highways, and was interested in because they produce a version of chartreuse liqueur. I sampled that, and found it refreshing, while the others shared two flights of various boozes produced by the house (gin, vermouth, whatever...). It was relaxing if not cheap. That stop was followed by the obligatory visit to HEB to stock up on essentials for the condo. 

After a scintillating round of miniature golf (which I did not lose) a leisurely dinner followed, at an Italian place with enjoyable live music and fair-quality food and service. Afterwards, we went back to the condo and played Hoopla until bedtime.

The rest of the weekend was taken up by a trip up to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, a couple of hours up the coast from here. It was kind of a disappointing trip, in that we saw very little in the way of wildlife -- one alligator eating a bird, a few others unmoving in the water; a few herons, a handful of other birds, scattered deer. But nothing to really get excited about. No snakes, no bobcats, no spiders, not even a distant peccary. It was like all the wildlife was away at a seminar.

The photo album for this trip can be seen by clicking this link.