As I was cleaning the garage I came across a book I bought many years ago in Dallas. It is called “50 hikes in Texas”. Never really used it very much, because most of the accessible hikes were based on the premise that you drive somewhere for 3 hours, go on a 2 mile hike and drive home. But that was in Dallas. Looking at it again, I realized that in Houston we are very close to something called the Lone Star Trail, which is 140 miles long. That sounded a little bit more serious.

(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) I had to try it out (and January to April are the recommended period, otherwise it is too hot, humid and insect infested or it is the hunting season). At first I headed for a portion called the Winter’s Bayou. It was an interesting trail, strongly reminiscent of something out of Jurassic Park or primordial swamp, but it was a little bit too wet and so after an hour I gave up and drove over to Huntsville to try out another portion. This went through a beautiful tall pine forest, it was dry and I was the only person out there. I will definitely be spending some future weekends on the trail.

Early spring is also a good time to visit the whooping cranes, something we have been planning to do for years and so this year we finally decided to go. To see the cranes you have to drive to Rockport, which is a small town just east of Corpus Christi. It is around four hours by car and so we decided to break the journey by visiting Goliad. (a little historical refresher, the famous battle cry “Remember the Alamo, remember Goliad”, except people in general tend to forget Goliad). It turns out that part of the Texas army under the command of Fannin was supposed to march to San Antonio to re-enforce the troops there, but Fannin decided no to go, which pretty much decided the fate of the guys in the Alamo. Then, general Houston ordered Fannin to retreat, but he goofed around for a few days and was finally overtaken by the Mexican army and surrendered when he was promised his life and that of his soldiers. The promise was promptly over ruled by Santa Anna and Fannin and his men were executed in Goliad. This made Fannin (who seems to have had a serious problem with obeying orders) into a hero and every town and city in Texas has street named after him.

Goliad is a pretty small Texas town with a very nicely restored mission (part of a system for converting the native population orchestrated by the Spanish and carried out by the Franciscans). It was a part of an extensive chain of missions – the Alamo was another. There is also a restored Spanish citadel and the native house of general Zaragoza (who led the Mexican army to victory over the invading French army at the battle of Puebla on the 5th of May –the year escapes me, but it was during the rule of Napoleon III, so sometimes in the 1850’s. The center of town has a typical Texas courthouse, except this one still has the live oak they used for executions – justice used to be a lot swifter in those days. All in all, lot of interesting things to see in this little town, in the middle of nowhere.

We booked a bed and breakfast in Rockport. Bed and breakfast places in the U.S. fill a different niche than in Europe, where a Zimmer Frei is a more economic alternative to staying in a hotel. In Texas, you can always find a motel room cheaper than a nice B&B, but the B&B is typically a much better value. The one we picked this time was in an old Victorian house (impressive if you realize how many hurricanes it must have survived in its 100 plus years). It was very cozy, with a large orange tree and history seeping from every corner. As is typical, the deal included breakfast. That may not be the correct word to use, because the “breakfast” started with an appetizer, then lots of eggs, potatoes and bacon and finished with a desert. We did not eat lunch, skipped supper and did not really feel like breakfast the following day.

To see the cranes one has to take a boat to the Aransas wildlife refuge. We sailed for over an hour through the Ship Channel, a passage between the coast and the barrier islands dredged during WWII to provide a shipping lane out of reach of German U boats lurking in the Gulf of Mexico. It turned out to be a resounding economic success and the channel continues to be busy to this day. The area is also rich in natural gas and we got very close to a drilling rig looking for more gas.

It turns out I knew next to nothing about the whooping cranes ( other than that they are large, beautiful birds). There are not many of them, in fact they came very close to extinction. They spend summer in the Water Buffalo park which straddles the northern border of Alberta and NWT and fly to Texas to spend the winter. They do not move in flocks like geese, but in small families. Typically there is only one chicken (very rarely two) and it tends to stay with its parents for a few years. In other words a rather slowly paced reproduction strategy, which partially explains why the are at the brink of extinction. It was difficult to get very close and good binoculars were essential. It would take a lot more expensive photo equipment than what we have been carrying to capture what we saw. So next time you are in Texas in the spring – put Rockport on the itinerary.