Four-Day Corpus Weekend

Back from Corpus Christi! Cathy and I decided to take off a couple of days to just hang out and relax. She hadn't been then since she was little. It was absolutely gorgeous weather!

Everyone there was so nice, from the "surfers" who looked more like the guys from Duck Dynasty, to the hotel bartender who searched the kitchen to hunt down two chocolate chip cookies for us. Sweet!

Here's the view of the Lexington from our room. We spent quite a lot of our time out on the balcony, people-watching and chatting.

I think everything comes into the Port of Corpus Christi on a barge. There were endless lines of them.

After the barges passed in the morning, sailboats aplenty dotted the horizon.

The marina is across the street. We walked around there early in the morning. These shrimpers came in with a flock of pelicans. I don't think in all the years I've lived near the ocean, I've ever seen this many pelicans together. It's scary when they are flying around your head, 'cuz those suckers are huge.

One of a few Voyage solar system displays in the U.S. is along the Corpus Christi seawall. (Washington DC has one as well.) I should have taken a photo of the one planet- I think it was Saturn- that says on the plaque something like it is so large in diameter at its equator, compared to the pole-to-pole diameter, that it takes like 1.5 times the amount of time to make one revolution at the equator as it does to make one revolution near the poles.

Um. Mmmmmmmkaaaay.

I spent the rest of the weekend, several beers and a pallet of cocktail napkins trying to figure out how all points on a planet, no matter the planet's shape or how distant the point from a pole, wouldn't revolve at the same exact rate. Not possible. I must make a trip back to see exactly what it says again.

Anyhoo... I've never taken the tour of the USS Lexington or any aircraft carrier. It is SUPERCOOL.

You have to be in shape to take this thing on. It's three football fields long and fifty-three decks tall. (OK, I'm sorta exaggerating there, but if you go, you'll agree it's a good estimate.) There are countless ladder-like stairwells that, strangely enough, are much harder to go down than up. Similar to the USS Cavalla submarine in Galveston, you are in tight quarters most of the time and you have to step over all the watertight doorways.

There is so much to see and touch at the Lexington. Very interesting site. They do a haunted ship tour, which I think would be fun and scary as all get-out. If you're going to do a touristy activity, this is it.

This is just a silly moment at a Halloween store in which we found ourselves. Cathy is displaying the costume she dubbed "Superwhore." Too risque for the company Halloween party? (We laughed way too long about that.)

At some point we figured out we were in a perfect spot at the hotel to throw Mardi Gras beads. If it were March. And Corpus had Mardi Gras. We wanted to find some and toss them anyway and pictured people looking up and being all "WTF?!" as they were pelted.

That giant tour bus? 99% sure it belongs to Foreigner, who were playing the American Bank Center three blocks down Shoreline Blvd. from the hotel. We were pretty psyched about seeing them pull in, but wouldn't know them by sight if we were standing in an elevator with them. I couldn't get "Cold as Ice" out of my head the rest of the night.

They checked in and immediately took off for the arena.

One last view of the Corpus Christi Marina! 'Twas a beautiful and fun weekend!

ETA: Corpus does have Mardi Gras! Barefoot Mardi Gras- March 1, 2014. Be there or be ellipsoid with a unique equatorial deviation resulting in a violation of the basic laws of physics!

Also ETA: WHOOP! Aggies beat Vandy!