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.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

 

Just Wondering...

 Like most people, I've been sort of following Russia's war of conquest in Ukraine this past week. I have no military experience, and I don't really know what things are like over there. But I've been fascinated by the week-long saga of the "40-mile-long convoy" approaching Kyiv from the north. Satellite photographs of the slow-moving gaggle of Russian trucks, tanks and other military vehicles have been all over the internet and the news since it started. I heard one American military expert say that the vehicles have to stick to the roads because the ground is not "frozen hard" as it normally is this time of year, and it won't support the great weight of these Russian vehicles.

 So I'm wondering, how come the Ukrainians haven't tossed some anti-tank weapons in the back of a Land Rover or some other off-road vehicle, and driven out there, and destroyed some of these vehicles? I mean, it just seems like (a) everybody knows where they are, and (b) they're moving really slowly. Seems like a few excursions to put two or three of the leading vehicles out of action would block the road for a time and bring the already leisurely advance of the column to a complete halt. It seems like it ought to be a turkey shoot.

 I'm sure there are reasons why this hasn't happened. Or maybe it has, and nobody has reported it. But I sure would like to hear an explanation of why it hasn't. Hell, if that sort of invading column were creeping down US 36, advancing on Denver, you know the fields either side of the road would be full of good ol' boys in Jeeps and on ATVs taking turns blowing up a tank here, an armoured personnel carrier there. I know from previous reporting that Ukraine has the sort of weapons needed -- some of them, anyway. Why haven't we seen video of Russian soldiers trying to push destroyed tanks off the roadway?

 I'd just really like an explanation.