On my recent Texas trip, I drove down to Padre Island National Seashore to see what that was all about. Living on the Atlantic Ocean, I figured it would be pretty much like "home" but had never been on the Gulf of Mexico before, so headed out. Now, my GPS and I are sometimes not on speaking terms, and other times I talk to it - questioning where it is taking me - and this trip was no different. My road map (which by the way are extremely hard to find in gas stations anymore) appeared to have a road to Port Aransas where I would get the road to Padre Island NS. Driving along I spied a sign - "Wait for ferry 30 minutes." Wait. What? Ferry? What ferry? Turns out that there is a State of Texas ferry operation across the shipping channel between the mainland and Port Aransas (where there was a Whooping Crane Festival going on that I decided not to attend because I was closer to the Cranes in Rockport and could book my own tours of the Wildlife Refuge). There are 6 to 7 ferrys that run 24/7/365, so that was a nice adventure it itself. Padre Island had a lot of wildlife to photograph, although the Kestrels were nearly impossible to photograph. There were also Roseate Spoonbills along the side of the road in the ditches and a lot of other birds in the marshes. Profitable day and nice drive.