Gumbo, shrimp, and tinkertoys

Gumbo......sounds like something good to eat, doesn't it? Well, the gumbo I encountered today had nothing to do with culinary treats. I was up well before sunrise to get ready for the waterfowl count. My usual partner, John, left yesterday with his wife, Diana, and headed out for a visit with relatives for the holidays in Houston. So, I was on my own today. It's about a six mile drive to the start of the route I was censusing and it was pretty foggy driving this morning. I unlocked the gate and started down the unpaved road into the refuge. I made it about a mile before the gumbo caused by yesterday's rain began to build up on the pick-up's tires. Now I'm no cowboy when driving these kind of conditions and I didn't want to get stuck again this year. So, I opted to abort this mission. Of course, with the condition of the road and surrounding area, it was impossible to turn around. That meant backing up the whole way I had driven in.

I later ran into (not literally) the two interns that were doing a different route and they had encountered the same conditions and also headed back to headquarters. That made me feel a little bit better about chickening out.

Around noon, I joined four of the other volunteers for a ladies lunch out. A restaurant in Brownsville had been suggested to us as having an excellent shrimp buffet on Fridays, so we went to check it out. Now this area is known for the wonderful wild gulf shrimp and we anticipated a real treat. However, we all agreed that we would not return there again. It was rather pricey for a lunch and the shrimp was mediocre. Next we will try a place in Port Isabel.

Since we were out, we decided to walk through the Bed, Bath, and Beyond store that was in the area. One of the gals needed some plastic wine glasses (glass is too heavy and breakable when traveling in an RV). Do you remember tinkertoys? When I was a kid, I loved my set of tinkertoys. So, I could hardly pass up a miniature set of them. More than forty tiny pieces are in a tinkertoy container the size of a small salt shaker. It was one of those impulse purchases...

Thanks for stopping by........talk to you later, Judy