Parks and Paths: We're roaming again.

"Let's Roam" took us to the Corpus Christi Art Museum Tues. afternoon to begin our "Sparkling City by the Sea" scavenger hunt.

The theme for our scavenger hunt: Corpus Christi history. It was a 1 1/2 hour hunt that was listed as hard. We followed the seawall for the first half of our hunt and came back through a historic district of older homes. Except for a couple of 'misdirections' on their part it wasn't hard!

The seawall follows the bay for 2 miles

and has a path for walking, biking, etc.. In 1928 they originally hired sculptur Gutzon Borglum, who later became famous for Mount Rushmore, to design it. Unable to secure funding it was put on bold. Borglum moved to South Dakota and the sea wall project was built and completed in 1941 without him. They did not use the originsl design but kept the same basic concept, 14' above sea level, with ampitheater-like steps that face the rising sun. Benches line the top of the wall facing towards the bay and the city. There are also 8 gazebos.

Here we go!

1 of the 8 gazebos. You can also see the benches lining the top, and the ampitheater steps on the bay side. One of our challenges asked how many panels were on the gazebo roof: 8.

The Federal Courthouse

I don't remember what these plane-like sculptures were but we had to count how many there were: 5.

Past the seawall is a Reef and further out is Mustang Island. Originally when the sea wall was first designed, a statue of Jesus was planned between the sea wall and the Reef, but too much controversy.

"Voyage" is a display placed in 2009 that allows you to walk through the planets to the sun. It's a scale model of 1 to 10 billion and covers 2,000 sq. ft. Beginning with Neptune...

Jupiter

As to scale the outer planets are further apart but after Earth, above left, they are of course closer together.

Salena memorial in one of the gazebos.

Roam asked what flower sculpture is at the Selena memorial?

Not part of our "roam" but I enjoyed the murals.

The following homes were close together and on our scavenger hunt. They were moved from their original spot to this area, Heritage Park.

This home was built around 1905 in the historic "Old Irishtown neighborhood." It was moved to Heritage Park in 1987 and renovated.

The Merriman house was built in 1951. Originally located on Broadway it was used as a hospital during the Civil War and for the 1867 Yellow Fever epidemic. It was moved to this site in 1982 for preservation.

During expansion, as a result of the Ropes Boom, this was one of two rent houses built by Mrs. Sidbury in 1883. Colonel Ropes wanted to make Corpus Christi a deep water port and began dredging a channel across Mustang Island. The venture failed when he ran out of money. The house was moved off of the bluff in 1926 to this location.

Julius Lichenstein was a merchant whose family had a dry goods store. He and his wife built this Colonial Revival style house in 1905, originally on North Chaparral St.

Our last scavenger hunt item was to find this sculpture by the Arts Center. Our challenge was to count the number of flowers.

USS Lexington in the bay.

Weds. morning we drove to Corpus Christi and crossed the causeway to the 18 mile long barrier Mustang Island. Destination: Mustang Island State Park. The state park has several miles of beach and nearly 100 camp sites, with half primitive and the other half water and electric. Texas State Parks charge $5/person to enter even to just drive around.

Weds. afternoon we enjoyed the last of the nice weather while we walked around Rockport.

Looong causeway to Mustang Island

Mustang Island State Park Beach.

We walked along the edge but no shells.

Primitive camping on the beach. We saw a pick-up camper and 1 tent along with some fishermen. There were quite a few day users enjoying the waves and sun.

We went back on the ferry. I've never been on such a small ferry, nor gone such a short distance. I swear it seemed like we just started and we were already there. Cost: $0.