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.
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| Olympic (detail) |
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| 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.
