Port Lavaca, Texas

For our next stop I had identified a little county park in Port Lavaca, on the Gulf of Mexico. It's one of these places that doesn't take reservations, so you have to call ahead to see if there's space. I'd called the day before, and there was, but when I called minutes before we started driving, they were all full up. Unfortunately, I had already give their address to my bike shop so that they could send me some repair parts that I needed. So, I rifled through the pages of our various campground guides and found one not too far away, and made sure they could take us in.

It was an easy two hour drive, mostly through wide open ranch country. This is pretty much all we saw until we got down to the coast:


When we got to the town of Port Lavaca, we could see the Lighthouse Beach park that I had originally wanted, and we could also see empty spaces, so we pulled in and, sure enough, were assigned a site. It's very close living, but right on the water, with a nice boardwalk, beach, fishing pier, and boat launch on the premesis.

The sun rises late this time of year, about 7:15, so I captured the beautiful sunrise over Lavaca bay, as seen from my back bumper:


While here we enjoyed walks on the boardwalk, plus I received the parts for my mountain bike and restored my ride to its original trail-devouring condition. Then, I got myself a Texas fishing license, strung up my fly rod, and shoved off into the bay in one of our kayaks:


It was a beautiful day, light winds and around 67 degrees. I paddled along an old fishing pier, then around an oyster shoal, and finally along the bridge pylons of the causeway that stretches across the bay. It was here that I caught fish. The first surprised me and I did not react soon enough to keep it from dragging my line across the razor sharp barnacles that encrusted the pilings. When my line went taught again, I was ready, and brought to the boat this nice little Red Drum:


We took a drive on our last day, a spectacular day: sunny and 73 degrees. We drove down to Magnolia Beach, where the parking lot WAS the beach:


Here we had a nice stroll along the water's edge, where the dogs could swim and run and find discusting things on the beach to eat!


Next stop: the city of Austin!