Big events for Bragg Family South, Thanksgiving 2013

 Lots of news with Bragg Family South since our last posting...where to begin...Well, I should start by wishing Kenny a happy 12th birthday!  Rather than posting an embarrassing picture of him, as parents are wont to do, I'll post this one taken of us on his second birthday.  Hard to believe the near teenager was ever this small...This picture was taken shortly after we had moved into the house we had just bought, so that is another anniversary to mark--we've lived here at McKnight Drive for a decade now!  Hard to believe next March I'll have been working here in southeastern Arkansas for the US Forest Service for 14 years!!  Our other really big news relates to the young lady pictured below:

Y'all may recall that we have a tradition with Bragg Family South of taking pictures of the kids at the door each year as they start their march off to school in the fall...Now we have a new star of the show...The picture above is of Hope heading out for her first day at her new permanent, full-time job as the Desha County 4-H extension agent!  Desha County is the county just east of the one we live in, so she has about a half-hour drive every day to her job in the town of McGehee, Arkansas, but she's really excited about the opportunity.  This isn't exactly the forestry career she had gone to college for, but it will allow her to use her teaching and extension skills working with kids and the public in general, and there is a pretty substantial natural resources component, so it isn't that much of a stretch.  We'll have to adapt as a family to Hope's new responsibilities and schedules, but I think we'll learn how to manage!

We're just wrapping up a visit from Hope's parents.  They came down the weekend before Thanksgiving for an extended visit.  Below, Stephen helps Hope's dad celebrate his birthday with a homemade pecan pie:

During the first weekend we had adventures hunting for the elusive Miss Rhoda tamale (actually, not that hard to find at all) and quartz crystal mining in the Ouachita Mountains near Hot Springs.  Hope actually started her job in the days right before Thanksgiving, so Rich and Ann watched the kids while we worked and I hunted.  We had our Thanksgiving dinner Wednesday evening, because we left early Thanksgiving day for our next adventure--spending a few days on the Gulf Coast.  Our first day was spent driving down towards our hotel in Port Arthur, Texas, and included a stop at Big Thicket National Preserve:

The cypress swamp in this picture shows only part of the Big Thicket--much of the rest of it is a dense vegetated upland forest of remarkable diversity.  We turned it rather early at the hotel that night, because we had another full day planned.  After a frosty morning start, we left Port Arthur for a drive along the coast towards Galveston, stopping at a couple beaches along the way:

We enjoy beach combing along the ocean, especially hunting for seashells:

There are lots of other neat things to see along the Gulf Coast, including the homes on stilts used to keep them relatively safe during hurricane storm surges:

This part of the Gulf Coast is also a major hub of the energy industry, with lots of the oil and gas being produced in the Gulf or along the Texas and Louisiana coasts being put into tankers.  It was impressive to see the queue of these tankers lined up, waiting their turns for loading--I think there were times you'd see a dozen or so anchored offshore:

We stopped at a small park at the mouth of Galveston Bay to look at some early 20th century fortifications (part of the coastal defense network established between World Wars I and II).  At this park, Kenny was fascinated by the large palm leaves laying on the ground:

To get across Galveston Harbor, we had to take a free car ferry, which was a big adventure!  Below, Beth and Stephen checked out the viewing deck with Rich:

We got to see some of the big tankers reasonably close up from the ferry, which is crossing a pretty busy port and navigation channel:

Here is another view of one of the ferries we rode:

They had several running at any one time to handle the volume of traffic--these ferries were pretty large and impressive ships themselves!  Even with all of the commercial and recreational traffic on the water, and all of the heavy industry around, there was a remarkable amount of wildlife visible, including these brown pelicans:

And the kids favorites--a small pod of dolphins that followed our ferry on the return trip:

We visited the Galveston coast during the slow season--it was cool, breezy, and far from the throngs that go here during Spring Break.  An interesting place, but very touristy--overwhelmingly so at times!  We'll return at a later date for more adventures, though...  After a second night in Port Arthur, we left early Saturday morning to return to Monticello.  We first headed east into Louisiana, stopping at a couple beaches near Cameron for more adventures.  It was low tide when we got to the first beach, so it was very easy for Stephen and Beth to walk out onto one of the mud flats:

These mud flats were very sandy and firm, so the kids hardly got muddy at all!  I was really impressed with some of the patterns that you'd see, such as the ripples in the mud left by the waves:

We didn't find a lot of shells at this beach, so we head a little further east to a different spot, where we struck paydirt!  Our first discovery, though, wasn't a shell, but rather a large coconut that had washed up on shore:

We also found a number of jellyfish that had the misfortune of getting stranding by the receding tide--these clear-bodied organisms are really weird looking!

Did I mention we hit the shell jackpot?  We could have spent hours looking for shells and brought back tons, but we did need to get back to Monticello, so we had to leave this bonanza behind:

For those of you who have never been along this part of the Gulf Coast, it is dominated by open grasslands (there is actually a pretty big cattle industry amongst the oil and gas wells).  Lots of wildlife, too, especially birds and aquatic species.  Just north of Cameron is the Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge.  Initially, we were going to pass through on our way north without stopping, but thankfully Stephen decided he needed a bathroom break...  Not seeing any more developed facilities, we pulled off onto one of the interpretative trails and found a private spot for nature's call...this was a one way road, so I grudgingly decided to not go the wrong way back to the highway, but rather we continued what turned into a really neat wildlife trail we could follow from the car.  We saw LOTS of birds pretty close up, like the heron below:

There were all sorts of ducks, geese, egrets, herons, and larger, toothier animals, too:

We saw numerous gators sunning themselves along the shoulders of the road we drove--the one picture above was probably about 6 feet long.  The gator below was even bigger--perhaps 8 feet long, and the birds apparently realized that these cold-blooded reptiles are rather sluggish on a cool day like this--the heron pictured below was probably no more than 10 or 20 feet from the gator, and the cormorant (dark bird, closest to camera) wasn't much further than that...

The kids just absolutely loved this stop (even with Beth's fake look of terror below):

The other really nice thing about this viewing trail is we could drive the whole length of it, so even Ann's limited mobility and eyesight weren't a major problem for her enjoyment of this location.  We arrived back in Monticello just after dark last night, and Hope's parents will leave for their home shortly, after another epic adventure with Bragg Family South!

p.s.:  We're happy to make these kinds of trips with other friends and family who'd like to visit us, so come on down!