Wednesday February 13

It was cold when I woke up. Made coffee and watched
the sunrise. Went on another bird walk and saw
pie-billed grebe, black bellied plover, bufflehead,
snowy plover, forster's tern and a peregrine falcon.

In the afternoon it warmed up to the middle 60's. I
went for a long paddle up the intracoastal waterway.
There are islands made of the mud dredged from the
waterway, very small and covered with houses. In the
distance are oil platforms and a huge refinery. A
couple large barges went by. The intracoastal
waterway is dredged to about 7 feet deep and the
channel is not very wide. The large barges regularly
knock over the large wooden piles that define the
edges of channel. The whole Laguna Madre is about 2.5
miles wide and outside the Intracoastal Waterway,
which runs up the middle, it's only 2-4 feet deep.

Chatted with a retired couple from Durango, CO, the
first people I've talked to who were camping in a
tent. They are big canoers but just bought an
inflatable double kayak and were giving it a tryout.
It looked huge but weighs only about 65 pounds.

Spent a while talking to Titus from Anchorage. He's
31, grew up in Homer, AK and started working on
fishing boats in junior high. A gentle man trying to
figure out what he wants to do when he grows up. He
and his wife, Desiree, are heading towards Bryce and
Zion and we might reconnect there.

Cooked up another big batch of noodles, chicken and
veggies, food for the week. I always have a much
better relationship to food when I'm on vacation. The
constant gnawing yearning to eat disappears. I've
lost another notch on my belt.

Heading out tomorrow for Laredo. Remember Allen
Sherman, My Son the Folk Singer:

(Sung with a Yiddish accent)
As I wandered out on the streets of Miami
I said to myself this is some fancy place.
I got me a room at the old Roni Plaza
With breakfast and dinner included of course.

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