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Since we have plenty of time to explore the Gulf Coast of Texas we didn’t move very far. We decided to stay in Rockport about eleven miles from our previous location at Goose Island State Park. Rockport is nestled up against another small town, Fulton. Both are hard-working towns that rely on the bounty of the Gulf for a living. They lack deep water harbors which limits their growth but the harbors are still busy. Tourism, duck hunting, deep sea fishing, shrimping and oystering all fuel the local economy. Rockport, the larger of the two towns, even supports a very active community of creative artists.

We checked into Ancient Oaks RV Park and settled in. We had planned a nice quiet New Year’s Eve for ourselves but the locals changed our plans. Shortly after dark fireworks started booming and bursting in the air. We figured the thunderous explosions at midnight would end our loud evening but boy, were we wrong. Apparently the good citizens of Texas over-prepared and they kept right on firing colorful blasts of gunpowder into the air until they finally ran out in the wee hours. So for the first time in years, we were both awake to usher in the new year.

Of course, that meant we didn’t see much of the first day of the year, since we had to get some sleep. The afternoon turned out to be a nice one so we took advantage of it by wandering along the rocky shoreline, past the harbor and over to the Rockport Beach Park. The mile-long Beach Park is an ambitious undertaking for a town of this size and is very well done. Admission is free if you walk in, so we did. The beach is man-made but really, who cares? The Park offers all kinds of amenities: palapas, picnic tables, sand volleyball courts, showers, concessions (during the summer months), a fishing pier, boat launch, and special swim area. I am sure the place is packed during the warmer weather.

The best part though is that it is Texas’s first Blue Wave Beach, meaning it has met and pledges to meet environmental standards. Part of the park is set aside as a wildlife sanctuary and one of our favorite birds, the Black Skimmer, nests there in the Spring.

We parked ourselves on a bench and watched as a Great Blue Heron and Great Egret fought for the pole position behind a wading fisherman. The Egret generally deferred to the Heron’s wishes and would stalk away each time the Heron advanced.

But every time the Heron turned his back, the Egret would sidle back, one step at a time. They were both eying the fisherman’s undersized catches and his bait bucket. Generally, fish enter a stupor when caught and even though he handled them carefully, they paused for a second in the water after he unhooked them. That second was all one of the birds needed to scoop up an easy meal. I wonder how long it took them to figure out that behavior?

Our quiet afternoon was broken by the huge splash of a Brown Pelican catching a fish. They fly over the water, watching for fish, then they awkwardly halt in mid-air and crash land, mouth open into the water. It looks awful at first, like they somehow lost all control, but that’s the way they earn a living. Hey, it works for them.

The cool, drizzly weather kept us indoors more than we liked but that gave us time to take advantage of the pool table and hot tub at our RV Park. When you live in a 21’ long RV you relish opportunities to get out into larger spaces. Excepting bad weather we use the outdoors as our living room; we put the cats out, we read, write, and even dine outside. Some places offer more privacy than this park but it is still enjoyable.

We spent one rainy morning at the Texas Maritime Museum near the Rockport Harbor. The small museum recounts the area’s local maritime history. We learned that since the surrounding bays are so shallow they had to employ not only lighthouses but lightships. Every evening a light keeper would motor a lightship out along the channel, drop anchor and fire up the light. The lightships could be anchored in different locations which kept captains apprised of the ever changing deep channels.

The exhibit that most piqued our interest was about the Belle, one of La Salle’s ships. The Belle was the last of La Salle’s four vessels when it ran aground and sunk in nearby Matagorda Bay in February of 1686. Through some well designed interactive displays we learned that the Belle was discovered in about 20’ of water in 1995. Since it wasn’t too deep archaeologists were able to build a cofferdam around it and pump out the water so it could be excavated. What an undertaking and what a treasure trove!

The ship was mostly intact and its remarkable state of preservation yielded over a million artifacts, one of which was a human skeleton. We watched a short video about the skeleton and the information that was being gleaned from it. He was male, between 35 and 45 years old when he died, he suffered back problems, he had sustained a non-life threatening blow to the head, he had horrible, rotten teeth with painful abscesses in his jaws and he probably died of dehydration. They are hoping to extract DNA from the body tissue found on his skeleton.

He was so well-preserved that he even had a good portion of his brain left. They zoomed in on it in the video as they floated chunks of his brain out of the foramen magnum, which I thought was amazing but made Lance sick. He has a low tolerance for body gore like that. My Grandma got us hooked on the medical TV show, House M.D. (which by the way has an episode featuring Dave Matthews coming up soon), and at least once an episode Lance has to cover his eyes. Cracks me up.

Back to the dead guy. They are hoping at some point to discover his identity. They do know he’s not La Salle. La Salle’s crew suffered so many hardships and setbacks that they completely lost faith in their leader and killed him somewhere inland. Wow, wouldn’t that policy make our leaders a bit more accountable? My flippancy aside, the skeleton has been handled with the utmost respect and was even given a proper funeral.

All that talk about dead guys made us hungry so we headed over to Moon Dog’s in Fulton’s harbor. It’s a real unassuming place, right on the water next to a small oyster factory, with a beachy atmosphere but they don’t take the food casually. We devoured quite possibly the best and biggest crab cakes we’ve ever eaten. Suffice it to say we needed a nap afterwards. Which is one of the wonderful things about living in our RV, as soon as we enter it, we’re home. Since the parking lot was empty and we were out of the way we tucked in for a cozy nap.

Banging and clanging and the engine noise of a forklift soon woke us. Peeking out our window we watched the shrimping boats unload their daily haul of oysters. Since it is too cold right now for shrimp the boats are used for oystering. The oysters are packed into large burlap sacks which the men unload using the ship’s block and tackle. The sacks must be heavy. After someone attaches what looks like luggage tags, the pallets of oyster-filled bags are taken by the forklift to the oyster factory. After that I have no idea what happens to them. We did watch some locals buy unopened oysters right off the boats. If you like oysters that’s probably a great way to get them.

On a beautiful warm sunny day we drove south; it’s time for us to get back on an island. Next stop, Port Aransas on Mustang Island. We’ve heard wonderful things about it and we can’t wait to see it for ourselves.

Photos: View our pictures from Rockport, Texas.

Dates: We stayed in Rockport, Texas from 12/31/06 to 01/07/07.