Beaumont, Texas

Today we are exploring Beaumont, an East Texas city of 120,000. It's only about an hour inland from High Island and will provide a base for us for a few days while we explore the areas around. We chose Beaumont for its good variety of hotels, restaurants, and night life possibilities. Little did we know that our travel experience would include the world's best oil gusher, the world's biggest fire hydrant, and the "world's best birding" (sic).

[The Latin adverb sic inserted after a quoted word or passage indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated exactly as found in the source text, complete with any erroneous, archaic, or otherwise nonstandard spelling. Wikipedia]

In other words, their convention and visitors bureau makes the claim about the world's best birding. We shall see.

We like this hotel - big rooms, wide hallways, a touch of faded elegance. It has a pleasant patio pool area with comfortable shaded sitting areas, and is pleasingly priced as well. 

MCM Elegante Hotel

Spindletop

Any tourist's first stop in Beaumont has to be Spindletop, famous for being the first place oil had been found in large quantities Texas. In its first ten days of production it produced 1,000,000 barrels, incredible amounts in 1901. Subsequent drilling established Texas and the United States as world leaders in oil production. Until that time oil was only used for lubrication and lighting, but with new quantities available it could now be burned as fuel. In a few years the world became dependent on this new power source. We know how this story ends 119 years later.

Oil is discovered in large quantities at Beaumont in 1901

World's Biggest Fire Hydrant

Who thought this was a good idea? Well, Walt Disney, actually. The 24' high, 4500 lb Dalmation Hydrant was donated to the city by Disney in 1999 on the re-release of "101 Dalmations". The hydrant is the front piece for the Fire Museum of Texas and is able to squirt 1500 gallons of water per minute from a fountain in its top. Sadly, we missed that sight.

Several other venues dispute the "World's Biggest" title nowadays, most notably Columbia, South Carolina (40' tall) and a Canadian entry in Elm Creek, Manitoba (29.5' tall). Clearly, when the conversion is done from American feet to Canadian metric feet, ours is bigger. I'm actually surprised that Canadians don't make more of this unnatural marvel. Must be our natural modesty.

Cattail Marsh Wetlands

This and other areas nearby like it are the reason we came to Beaumont. Access to a variety of habitats is quick, with the short walks and good footing which I still need. Check the link under the picture for more about Cattail Marsh.

Cattail Marsh Wetlands, Beaumont, Texas

Northern Shoveler seen today at Cattail Marsh

Tomorrow is looking like it will be rainy so we will be turning back the clock on steam and light bulbs. Stay tuned.

High Island

Today we are travelling to High Island, Texas, a slight hump of land sitting on the Gulf Coast about 35 miles north east of Galveston. To get there we will first take a ferry ride across the mouth of Galveston Bay to Port Bolivar. Here we are following the Borden truck onto the ferry. Coincidently we are looking for a crossword - clue: condensed milk pioneer Gail. The answer is “Borden”! When a day starts like that you just know it has great promise.

It only takes a few minutes to cross then we are off along the coastal road. Its a beautiful sunny day with only a few puffy clouds building in the north. The highway runs right along the ocean and we can see tanker traffic heading to and from the refineries at Galveston.

I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but this part of Texas is FLAT. Really flat. If you had a had a three story house you could see Cuba from the roof (rhymes with woof).

We are headed for High Island, so named because it rises 11.6 metres above the surrounding land. It is a salt dome, an expression of a much deeper layer of salt and is the highest point of land on the coast from Mobile, Alabama to the Yucatan. I wasn't impressed by the rise in elevation (think a three story apartment building) until it was pointed out to me that 30 feet might just save your life in a hurricane storm surge. The island is covered in scrubby woods consisting largely of Live Oaks and is home to about 500 people. It is also the temporary home of 300,000,000 birds for a few weeks each year.

Wikipedia does a great job of describing it:

High Island, with its substantial wooded areas unlike elsewhere on the upper Texas coast, is a natural refuge for migrating birds making their perilous way across the Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico into their northern summering grounds in the United States and Canada. During this spring migration, the birds must navigate the hundreds of miles of overwater flight to find refuge and food on their journey northward. During a normal spring migration, birders from around the world can find concentrated and high numbers of species of migratory birds in High Island that winter in southern Mexico, Central America, and South America, and make their summer breeding homes in the north.

The most spectacular bird viewing is during a spring northerly storm, which causes a "fall out" at High Island. During these storms, the migrating birds encounter strong head winds and a prolonged and energy-draining flight over the gulf. Every bird that comes off the Gulf near High Island is then exhausted, and immediately seeks a dry land perch. In such conditions, the beaches of the Bolivar Peninsula can be covered with tens of thousands of birds. With its wooded areas and more ample feeding opportunities, almost every tree and open space in High Island is covered with exhausted birds.

This short stretch of coast has the happy circumstance of being the first landfall for both the Central and Mississippi Flyways and the concentration and variety of birds is unmatched anywhere in North America. The beaches of the Bolivar Peninsula are thick with shore birds and the woods are teeming with Baltimore Orioles this morning. Birder heaven!

We spend the day in the four sanctuaries in High Island all owned and run by the Audubon Society. One of our favourite places is The Rookery, an easily viewed nesting site for Roseate Spoonbills, cormorants, herons, and egrets. This link provides a good overview:

Smith Oaks Rookery, High Island, Texas

Great White Egrets at The Rookery, Smith Oaks Sanctuary, High Island, Texas

We’ll spend two or three days in this area with the town of Beaumont as our base. It’s time to head there and find a place to eat and sleep. Tomorrow we’ll take a little tour of Beaumont before checking out more wildlife sanctuaries.