Odometer: 110,482
8:00 getting up. 10:00 leaving to Mustang Island State Park which we are just passing. In Port Aransas we visit the Birding Center near the water treatment plant. Besides cormorants and white and brown pelicans we also see sea turtles, lots of herons and ducks, and some big crabs but no alligator.

We take the ferry to the mainland and follow Hwy 35 north through some very nice beach communities, looking a bit like Caribbean style villages, already Mustang Island and Port Aransas looked much more inviting than what we had seen before. Would the ocean be cleaner and nicer, we would have been tempted to stay.

We turn right on SR 774 to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. They offer a 16 mile loop with different walks. After visiting the first outlook we put on some mosquito repellent, but it doesn’t keep all mosquitoes off as we soon find out. Therefore, we limit ourselves to what we see from the car and from close by outlooks: pelicans, cormorants, egrets, a stork, herons and a deer. Marco has also seen a javelina.
On the road to and from the park we see hundreds of white egrets (Ibis) on grassland and in cotton fields.

SR 521 is brining us to Lake Jackson where we take a room at a 40 year old, lousy Super 8 motel and have dinner at a Chinese place, which was good but not worth the price (USD 30).