John's Pass Boat Ride

Pelicans in a tree

Photos.

Egrets

We usually go for at least one boat ride each visit and yesterday seemed like a good day. Sunny but not too hot. Breezy but not knock-you-off-your-feet windy. I left my jacket in the vehicle -- not quite a first for me, but I don't usually go on the water without a windbreaker. Gettin' wild and crazy, I guess.

I wasn't particularly careful about picking a boat. Hubbard's Marina looked good enough to me and we got to John's Pass just in time to buy tickets for a 90-minute ride, total $37 with the senior discount.

We saw dolphins almost as soon as we got out of the boardwalk area. There were at least five, but I really couldn't get a good photo so I gave up and simply enjoyed the ride. Almost every picture I took was really bad, mostly because large expanses of water made for boring photos. Others have done a better job with photos and videos than I: see Hubbard Marina FB page.

The major, magnificent exception was the Audubon island near John's Pass. The trees were full of egrets and herons of every kind and size and lots of pelicans. The pelicans seemed to keep to themselves. All the birds seemed very content but they really looked odd perched so high, when I'm used to seeing them on the beach or in the shallows. The narrator said there are even more birds at the end of the day, when they roost for the night.

They looked like decorations in a Christmas tree. It was the most extraordinary bird sighting I've ever experienced. I felt the way I did when I first saw sea lions on the rocky islands near Monterey Bay in California.