The town of Rockport is up the coast from Corpus Christi about a half hour or so.  This was also an area that I planned a return stay in for a particular reason.  If all goes according to plan I’ll be writing about that tomorrow night.  I didn’t return to the same campground as last year because it was eh, and there really wasn’t any place to ride in that area.

Goose Island State Park is in a great area to ride and has very nice, secluded campsites.

 

 

As opposed to last year’s parking lot style camping in Mustang Island State Park.  I remember having so much anticipation about where this park was situated, and then pulling in and, WHAT!!???  But I digress.

The tiny (and I mean tiny) community of Lamar is adjacent to Goose Island SP and both are on Aransas Bay and off the highway that follows the coast in this area.  The two provided a great day of riding.

On a local map I saw a spot marked and identified only as “Big Tree”.

I know I’ve written this before, but I have to repeat it, a photo can’t do this tree justice.  It was inspiring to be by it.  This little park is dedicated to only one thing; the care and preservation of this tree.  It is over a thousand years old.  At the base, the trunk is 11 ft. across.  When this tree was 500 years old, this coastal area of what would become Texas, was being explored and mapped by the first European to come to this area, a Spanish explorer named Alfonso Alvarez de Pineda.  When this tree was 850 years old, the original town of Lamar, which couldn’t have been much of threat to anyone, was burned to the ground by Union troops near the end of the Civil War.  The night they drove old Dixie down indeed.

Having survived the centuries it is now lovingly taken care of by the Lamar Women’s Auxiliary.  Whose motto by the way is; Don’t Mess with Texas, or, The Lamar Women’s Auxiliary.  🙂

I am well and hope you all are too.