Amok at the Clay Pot Mecca

We took a little day trip to Marshall, Texas yesterday to visit the red clay pot capital of the multiverse, Marshall Pottery.

It’s probably a good thing we took the smaller vehicle. The heavily discounted pots were such a steal we filled the entire back of the CrV. We ended up with eight enormous pots for tomatoes, eight slightly smaller for herbs, six colorful glazed crocks for the master bathroom, two large black glazed beauties and one frivolous, irresistible fish.

The poor little CrV was packed to the gills.

This post should probably appear over at “Cheesy” since it also concerns food, but what the heck… it was a rolling mini-trip.

Good hamburgers can be found at Jucy's. Along with a great ice cream parlor of Blue Bell delights. The oddity was the free BBQ beans. All you can eat with any sandwich,  they were the star of the show. The excellent yet unusual seasoning mix had us both stumped. Tz ate quite a few, in addition to a Blackened Bleu Burger. I had a BLT and couldn’t eat another bite all day.

The onion rings were excellent, the fries…meh.

Marshall is a lovely little town with an enchanting Christmas Lights festival. Drop by some day, even if you don’t need any pots.

Tz practicing his Morse code?

A little known movie, "The Great Debaters" is set at Wiley College, located in Marshall, and is well worth a place on your Netflix queue.

Return Visit to Matagorda

There would be fascinating prose to accompany these pictures if each day had 28 hours and each week nine days. The restrictions imposed upon us by our limited dimensions in this puny parcel of the MULTIVERSE leave me no alternative but to fling pictures up on this blog with hopes of someday returning to talk about them.

Briefly, we had weather variations galore.

Flat seas, crashing waves, clear skies and foggy mist all invited us out on the jetties. Some days were safer than others.

LOTS of birds, including my first Piping Plover.

A cattle drive across the Colorado. Poor, emaciated cows… hopefully they will find more to eat now that we have had rains.

Interesting fishing vessels and people.

An almost empty campground.

It was a lovely week.

New laptop, new camera, new software. Next trip in February. Will my work-flow improve enough to be ready by then? Let us hope.

Goose Island State Park

Goose Island State Park gives you a campsite about as close to the endangered Whooping Cranes as one could want. There are many RV parks in Rockport if you desire FHU, but with a Texas park pass you can’t beat this place for price, location, wildlife and the possibility of a crane family hanging out right at your doorstep. There is a dump station upon exit.

The cranes had not yet arrived during our visit. They generally show up around November 1rst. We took a boat tour to see the big birds up close and personal a few years ago. I’ll try to get some of those pictures in this post at a later date.

As mentioned HERE, the entry into the Park is a bit daunting, but the ranger assured me the old oaks are cropped to a uniform 14’ clearance. Go slow, you’ll be fine.

The sites have electric (50amp) water, and a picnic table with shelter. They are very simply lined up along the bay. No frills.

Having your big front window just feet from the water is great. A blue heron considered me a major irritant and tried repeatedly to poop upon my head while squawking loudly.

The park map is HERE. The bayfront sites are broken into two sections. We occupied #25, in Section 25-45. Section 1-24 was closed for renovation. When we return, we might want to be over on the other side to be closer to the long fishing pier, but with all the construction it was impossible to tell if those sites, when completed, will be long enough for Beauregard.

Sites 25 & 26 are level, as were 44 & 45, the sites down at the end near the marshes, the best area for possible crane sightings. The middle sites would be a leveling challenge. The wooded section was unsuitable for big rigs.

This park is also home to The Big Tree, a most impressive Live Oak more than a 1,000 years old. The tree resides majestically in a mott of much charm and magic. One expects a gnome or fairy to pop out of a crevasse at any moment.

Many legends are told of this tree. My favorite draws connection to the cannibalistic KARANKAWA people. These astonishingly tall, heavily tattooed indigenous inhabitants must have come as quite a shock to European explorers.

This ENT was already old when one of my Favorite Women walked the earth.  The breeze was cool, the area shady. The ground was covered in the small fallen leaves of a shrub. I know not what it was, but the fragrance was delicious, reminiscent of eucalyptus when crushed between fingertips. It was difficult to leave…

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”  J.R.R. Tolkien

Since I accidently wiped out most of my pictures from this day, including the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge Complex,  instead… Duke & friends.

The History of Matagorda

Sacre Bleu! It’s Doctor Dirt, the Armadillo Archeologist, come to tell us about “one of the most important archaeological finds of the century”.

PBS created a NOVA.

Voyage of Doom (Original broadcast date: 11/23/99)
“Buried in mud beneath the shallow waters of Matagorda Bay in Texas, lay a glorious remnant of one of the most ill-fated voyages of the Age of Discovery. After years of searching the area, nautical archaeologists doing a magnetometer survey honed in on a promising site. And on the first day of diving, they were astounded to feel the distinctive outlines of a cannon, and sense the massive size of the wreck. When the cannon was hauled from the water, their hunch was confirmed: This ship, called La Belle, belonged to the 17th Century French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle. NOVA follows the building of a coffer dam and subsequent complete excavation of this remarkable site. Preserved were not only armaments and trade beads, but also a wealth of organic material—the wooden hull, leather shoes, and even a skeleton—that brings the voyage to life.”

You can read the Wiki Info.

“La Belle was one of Robert de La Salle's four ships when he explored the Gulf of Mexico with the ill-fated mission of starting a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River in 1685. La Belle was wrecked in present-day Matagorda Bay the following year, dooming La Salle's Texas colony to failure. For over three centuries the wreckage of La Belle lay forgotten until it was discovered by a team of state archaeologists in 1995. The discovery of La Salle's flagship was regarded as one of the most important archaeological finds of the century, and a major excavation was launched by the state of Texas that, over a period of about a year, recovered the entire shipwreck and over a million artifacts.”

There is a TON of reading on the subject.

http://www.thc.state.tx.us/lasalle/lasbelle.shtml

http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/belle/

http://www.matagordaisland.com/

http://www.citybytheseamuseum.org/lasalle.html

La Salle Projects

Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum

Conservation Research Laboratory, Texas A&M University

Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History

Matagorda County Museum

Museum of the Coastal Bend

Smithsonian Magazine, La Salle article

And there is an excellent BOOK I’ve added to my Amazon wishlist, to be purchased as soon as a cheap used copy becomes available, should you wish to borrow…

The Campground at Matagorda

LCRA (Lower Colorado River Authority) is the conservation and reclamation district that operates the Matagorda Bay Nature Park.

This 1,600 acre park was acquired by LCRA in 2001.  The area was undeveloped back when we lived in Houston and still has no hotels or big condos. There is nothing much close by. Get fuel either leaving Houston coming down or leaving the Corpus area coming up. The closest easy diesel station going north is outside of Angleton. The tiny backroads are beautiful and safe. I’ll add a road map soon. Forget the highways, you’ll miss all the good stuff.

Although Texas Parks & Wildlife is responsible for this park’s campground reservations, you cannot make your reservation on the Internet. They must be phoned in at 1-800-776-5272, or direct to Austin at (512) 389-8900. Your Texas Parks Pass does not apply here, and the phone menu is long and tedious. Be prepared to wait. The place is often booked solid on the weekends and virtually empty on week days.

Find the park campsite map HERE. There are just five of the big pull thru sites, but the back-in premium sites aren’t bad at all.

For Visitor Information, services, fishing guides, attractions and general information you can call the park office directly (979) 863-7120.

Descriptions will always be clockwise starting at upper left.

1) Park office, Beauregard in the background.  2) Looking north up the Colorado from office.   3) Beauregard later that day when the park was all full. 4) Looking south toward the Gulf.

Pull thru site 66 could easily fit 3.75 Beauregard’s. They are silly big.

1) Looking west  2) Looking east.  3)  Our neighbor the 2010 Airstream.

4) A big group of college buddies come down once a year to go crabbing. Here are the premium back-in sites completely filled with 40’ & 42’ rigs.

1)  The nice path along the river with fishing piers.  2) The premium sites from the office.  3)  The beach and the big pier with the Nature Center in the background. (The Corps of Engineers owns and maintains this enormous pier, which allows excellent salt water fishing) 4) The boys heading toward the beach.

Walk way out on this pier at night for a view of the stars that will leave you breathless.

But speaking of breathless, if you have respiratory issues or known sensitivity to Red Tide, check the Red Tide status before you go.

The Milieu

While quickly sorting through pictures for the Matagorda RV Park overview post I ran across this charming example of the park’s ambiance. This boy was dancing with his little sister.

The park is remote.  Everyone there was local.  I actually heard someone say their friend had just arrived “all the way” from Houston. The place fills up on the weekends. There were kids, but nice kids. Virtually everyone had a dog, yet they were all socialized, leashed, NOT yappy and the owners were exemplary at poop patrol.

During our second weekend a big, extended family set up camp right on the river and hauled out tons of expensive fishing gear, chairs, lanterns and what not…. then proceeded into town for the entire evening with absolutely no worries that anything would be stolen.  Old Texas manners at their finest.

The Magic of Matagorda

 

The Sunsets

The Surf

The Sand

The Sunsets

The Sky

The Colors

The Serenity

The Shadows

The Kayaking

 

The Big Fishing Pier

The Fishing

The Shelling

Did I mention the Sunsets?

The Night Sky is magnificently dark thanks to this remote location, far from city light pollution. If anyone has an 80mm short tube refractor scope they are not using and would like to donate…

Since we live on an imperfect planet, here is the evil magic.

The rip currents, the dead wildlife, the small fish killed and wasted by fishermen seine netting for bait, and last but not least the mosquitoes.

No fires allowed. There was an outbreak at Aransas Wildlife Refuge, quickly extinguished, that filled the sky for a time. The squiggles in the sand are snake tracks. It is encouraged that all fish remains, even the shells from your fresh dead shrimp, be thrown back into the river to support the ecosystem.