This Morning In Corpus Christi Then Hiking The Veterans Park Jungle At Noon

No. That is not a trail on the Tandy Hills in the picture. It is a picture of a trail in Veterans Park in Arlington, taken today around noon.

I had to be in Arlington today, hence dropping in on Veterans Park.

The Barnett Shale Natural Gas Drilling Operation, across the street from Veterans Park was in full noise making mode today. I shot some video. I have not listened to it yet to hear if it caught the noise. I'm also not sure, but I think I may have made a video of a drilling operation in this location before. So many videos, such bad memory.

Veterans Park is one of the best parks I've seen in the D/FW Metroplex. It has a lot going on. There is a Xeriscape Garden, showing you what you can grow in Texas, naturally, with little water. Then a more formal garden. There is a complex of trails that winds through the Xeriscape and formal garden.

There is a nice playground for kids. Baseball fields. A Disk Golf Course. Covered picnic pavilions. A stage. Big open hilly fields of grass. A paved trail of a couple miles. And a wild zone that is like a jungle.

The Veterans Park Jungle is where I hiked today. I used to do this all the time. I think discovering the Tandy Hills put an end to it. The Veterans Park Jungle is hilly, heavily wooded and covered with a maze of trails. It took me a long time to stop getting lost in there.

Part of the wild zone is more open and sort of a redrock color. There are several Disk Golf "holes" in this zone, so you have to be on the lookout for flying disks.

As the big dry out from Tropical Storm Hermine continues, the humidity has fallen to 62%, which is still very humid, hence it is very muggy out there. A mugginess not made less muggy by the little bit of rain that dripped for a few minutes a few minutes ago.

I don't quite understand why today's Veterans Park hiking was so much more dampness inducing than yesterday's HOT Tandy Hills hiking, hiking which is much more strenuous, might I add.

But I was pretty much drenched when I sat for a minute or two in one of the gazebos in the Veterans Park Xeriscape zone.

The extreme wetness was sort of embarrassing. I went to the Pantego ALDI after I left Veterans Park, pretty much looking as if I'd just gotten out of a pool.

This morning I was virtually down in Corpus Christi again, this time checking out the bar and club scene and some hotels. I want to move to Corpus Christi.

101 Texas Degrees While Visiting Fosdic Lake, Port Aransas, Harlingen, Corpus Christi, South Padre Island & The Brazosport Area

As you can see, on this the last day of July, we have hit the predicted temperature of 101. The HEAT has melted the humidity out of the air, so there is no Heat Index saying the temperature feels hotter than it is.

I had intended to get outside and make my way to the Tandy Hills around 3. But, there was little breezing going on, and the sun had already heated it up out there to 100, so I decided to go to my favorite reading spot at Oakland Lake Park and read for awhile, while glancing up at Fosdic Lake.

It seems every Saturday there is something happening at the Oakland Lake Pavilion. Today it was some sort of party, part of which involved smacking a pinata hanging from a tree.

A surprising number of Texans were out in the HEAT aerobicizing. But, not wimpy me. I was under shade enjoying reading. I'd tell you what book I'm reading, but it's sort of embarrassing, so I won't.

I was in need of a peaceful break because the morning had been spent virtually visiting the Texas Gulf Coast. I went to Port Aransas, but did not see the Songbird of the Gulf Coast, Alma Squillante.

The furthest south I made it was to Harlingen. Cool town with a lot of palm trees and parrots. I also like Corpus Christi. I need to move back near saltwater.

I enjoyed South Padre Island. I can see why this is where Elsie Hotpepper heads whenever she gets a hankering to find a new husband.

And then, heading back north, almost to Galveston, I visited the Brazosport Area, where good fishing and beaches can be found, but I caught none and did no swimming.

I did have a really good swim really early this morning though. And likely will have another one tomorrow morning on the first day of August.

Men's Health: Five Of The 10 Fattest Cities Are In Texas

Being obese is stigmatized in most of the modern Western world, though those thus endowed were seen as a symbol of wealth at other times in history, and still are in many parts of Africa. And possibly Texas.

The current issue of Men's Health Magazine has yet one more of those ubiquitous lists, listing, this time, the Fattest Cities in America, from #1 to 100.

From the Men's Health website...

"Go to Google Maps, type in "United States," and you'll be reminded of just how big Texas is. But what you can't see is the size of the state's citizenry: Five Lone Star cities are among the nation's fattest, with Corpulent Christi at the top."

Joining Corpulent Christi in the Top Ten from Texas are #3 El Paso, #4 Dallas, #7 San Antonio and #9 Houston. All received a Grade of F, except for Houston, which got a D-.

Also on the list from Texas, but extremely lean, is Austin, at #97. Getting an A grade, along with Seattle at #98. Only Seattle, Washington, D.C., Burlington, Vermont and San Francisco are skinnier than Austin.

Other Texas towns on the list are # 13 Lubbock with a D- Grade, #54 Arlington with a C+ and #66 Fort Worth with a B-.

Some optimistic Obesity News for Texas is that NBC's Biggest Loser reality TV show is going to help Texas lose some of its poundage, promising to help America's 2nd biggest state shrink.

Currently, I am in Fort Worth, which, according to Men's Health, is almost as skinny as Austin. I am guessing it is all those natives constantly hiking all over the Tandy Hills that keeps Fort Worth from ballooning to a Dallas/Arlington size of bigness.

Beached Whale Killed on Texas Gulf Coast

Alma, the Songbird of the South, just emailed me with a story from her zone, that being the Corpus Christi, Port Aransas zone. On Mustang Island, yesterday, beachgoers came upon a stranded 30 foot long, 10 ton sperm whale who had run itself aground on a sandbar.

Whales do this when something is badly wrong, as in an illness, or just old age. Onlookers surrounded the whale as it thrashed about. Eventually people from the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network showed up. It was decided to tranquilize the whale and then haul it to shore before euthanizing it. And then perform a necropsy to learn what was wrong with the whale.

Alma also included a link to Texans' comments about the stranded whale with Alma commenting about the comments that "some people are obviously insane."

Some of the comments-----

"Bad tomatoes?"

"Bad fillet."

"Bad sushi"

"They did not use euthanasia for the whale....they gave it tranquilizers and then bled the animal in the surf."

"They should try blowing it up like in the one video on the internet were a whale beached its self and there was no way to remove it so they used dynamite to blow it up in to smaller pieces but used to much and the whole thing just blew into a bunch of small chunks and got a whole lot of people covered in whale body parts."

"THING IS, THESE IDIOTIC SPECTATORS AND THEIR KIDS ARE STANDING TOO CLOSE TO THIS STRICKEN WHALE WHEN THEY COULD'VE GOTTEN INJURED. PARENTS, WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LEARN?"

"Under what authority exactly did the police and lifeguards have to "clear the area". If people want to take the risk of getting close to a stranded 30 foot sperm whale in a public area, they should be allowed to do so."

"LOL go play in the freeeway."

"Well, that's American's for you!"

"It was Bush and the Republicans fault!"

"Hey dudeI just wanted a few steaks for the bbq. As Homer would say "MMMMMMM Whale burgerrrrrrrr.......", the whale died, its tragic, people are curious, and if it were up to me I would have eaten him."