MATHIS TEXAS AREA

Our next stop was the Wilderness Lakes RV park in Mathis Texas.  It is a park in the middle of no where with a small town a few miles away.  It has 3 lakes you can boat on, paddle boat, kayak or fish on.  I spent a lot of time walking around the lakes looking for birds, snakes, alligators and other dangerous critters. 

It is a beautiful park with lots of trees and biking and walking paths.  The people in the park were so friendly and it took me no time to meet 3 other ladies who love taking pictures and looking at birds and flowers.  One lady worked setting up birding areas in all kinds of parks in her career.  It was wonderful to have her to share her knowledge with me.  She pointed out many birds that are really only in this area of Texas.  Such as these whistling ducks

                          And the very flashy kiskadee - not to mention noisy

We saw lots of cardinals but they are a lot faster than I am and I never did get a good shot

these are ibis -  the brown one is immature,  I know that cuz he wasn't behaving very well and stuck his tongue out at me

                                                          Red eared slider turtles

                          

              The next pictures are just while walking around the park

this is a huge field of asters - later in the morning when the sun dried them the butterflies came out in droves I have never walked in among butterflies like that - it was amazing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All kinds of cattle egrets came in one day, a dog scared them up in the tree which was fun to watch  It was interesting to see all 3 egrets in the same place close to each other and be able to differentiate them on size etc

We went into Mathis to the grocery store a couple of times and also into a couple of local restaurants.  Need our Mexican food fix on a regular basis.  I was looking for a field of cotton but they had pretty much been harvested by the time we got there.

We drove past a sign that said City of Corpus Christi Wilderness Sanctuary. Of course I nagged Don to take me there for a walk.  That was a very interesting experience.

It was a beautiful sunny day and the sky was gorgeous.  We walked along the path for less than a block and came to a shallow river across some big rocks.  I did not feel comfortable crossing without our sticks so we decided not to.  We took another grassy path and the first thing we saw was this:

Along with bones scattered above the "grave"    Not sure what the message is here?  smoking kills??
anyway it was kind of creepy but we kept walking

then we came to the black vulture roost.  What a STINK.  There were dozens flying around and lots on these rocks by the river as well as in trees.  We decided this was too bizarre and left.

The next day we went to the Lake  Corpus Christi State Park which was absolutely beautiful - quite the opposite of the sanctuary.

The tall grass was amazing.  It had very bamboo like stalks and must have been 15 feet tall in spots.  The park had lovely walk outs to the lake and beautiful picnic areas and a new bird blind.

We very much enjoyed the park and the lovely friendly people.  I managed to score some fantastic fresh lemons and ruby grapefruits.  For a small park they had a lot of things going on all the time.