21st Jan – 24th Jan 2022
We left Port Aransas and Mustang Island by taking a short (and free) ferry ride to the nearby Harbor Island and the road re-joined the mainland by way of another small island, a causeway and a bridge. The road continued to cross the flatlands of this coastal area, crossing numerous wide inlets by long, tall bridges, which for some reason completely freak Nick out. Most of the land that we passsed through was arable- producing rice, cotton, pecans, peanuts and watermelons in the growing season. After a stop at Walmart to provision-up and get a Subway for lunch we headed to our next stop, Palacios.
Local lore has it that the town is was originally named Tres Palacios by some sea-weary and hallucinating Spanish sailors who could have sworn they saw ‘three palaces’ on the shore near where they were shipwrecked. More likely it was named for José Félix Trespalacios, an early Mexican govenor of Texas. The name was shortened to Palacios so as not to confuse it with a nearby Post Office and the local pronounciation of the name is ‘Palay-shoss’ rather than the more Spanish sounding ‘Palay-ci-oss’.
There are a few big industries near the town to provide employment. Firstly the town is home to a fleet of about 400 shrimp boats which reside in its rather impressive harbour, a few miles down the road to the West is one of the largest plastics factories in the world and to the East lies one of Texas’ two nuclear power stations which producing 2700mW of carbon-free power, enough to power 2 million homes.
In the 1970s there was a rash of UFO sightings in the area and the town’s mayor, Bill Jackson, declared 24th October 1973 to be Palacios’ First Annual UFO Fly-In Day and called on President Nixon to declare the town the Interplanatary Centre Of The Universe. I don’t think that he did. After all, this is Texas, not New Mexico.
There were two hooks to us deciding to stay in Palacios. The first was the shrimping fleet. It is the third largest in Texas, but the town still declares itself the ‘Shrimp Capital Of Texas’. We love watching big boats and fossicking around working harbours. Although it is low season currently there was still plenty of vessels coming and going and the harbour was so massive we had to tour it on bicycles. At the far end of the harbour there was a large fishermans memorial statue which was pretty impressive and obviously a bit sobering.
Our second reason for stopping here was courtesy of another episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. This area is home to a fairly large population of Vietnamese immigrants and because of this there are several Vietnamese restaurants in town. One of these is called The Point and was featured on the show when Bourdain visitied here. The Point is an ecclectic place. It is part grocery store, part bait and tackle shop, part bottle shop and lottery outlet and serves Mexican and Vietnamese food ‘to-go’, that you can eat inside at a long table. With Pho and bao buns-white silken orbs of deliciousness- on our minds we called in there during the day as part of a general mauranding about on bicycle. We wanted to check out its location and our route there in preparation for a visit later for dinner. Tragically we discovered that the kitchen was closed until 1st February. Well perhaps tragedy is a bit of an overstatement, but we were very disappointed. We were grumpy and by now very thirsty -because we had had bacon and egg butties for breakfast and not brought any water on our bike ride – and then we had a full blown argument about our difffering techniques for having an argument. I ‘stormed off’ by cycling a bit ahead of Nick but then he caught up and we bought a bottle of water at a shop. It wasn’t really worth perpetuating the sulking and we went back, sat out with a beer to watch the sunset and had a very nice home-made special fried rice for dinner instead. Anthony would have enjoyed it just as much as any offering from The Point I am sure.
This was another town along our southern journey that has clearly had it’s hey day. Long gone are the early 20th C days when, having been marketed as ‘The City By The Sea’, it had a hundred business, numerous hotels and churches, a waterfront entertainment pavilion and the establishment of the Texas Bapstist Encampment. While the main street is now very quiet, the town is slowly regenerating its waterfront with a promenade and a cute little town beach and the old party pavilion has recently been rebuilt. The Texas Baptist Encampment although all closed up currently, seems to be going strong and, according to the internet, is still providing a location for summer camps and retreats year-round. I think this would be a delightful place to hang out in the summer, but our visit was in the middle of winter. Time to move on.