A Mini-Vacation in Search of Gorillas and Some Calm at the Dallas Zoo and Surfside Beach

Here is part 1 of a mini vacation we took during the last week. The photo dumps are smaller, because I’m taking less pics, enjoying real-life experiences more. Joyce wanted to see gorillas again, and I wanted (needed) to get back to the ocean. Our original plan was to see an old friend in San Diego (Mark Clements) and visit the world-renowned gorilla environment at the San Diego Zoo, then get some beach time in California. That is an expensive trip, even for only a few days. Instead we found with a little research that the Dallas Zoo is one of the top 4 gorilla breeding habitats in the nation—so we adjusted our plans, decided to go to a new Texas beach town that neither of us had visited. That will be part 2.

The Dallas Zoo was impressive though very hot and steamy even during our early morning start time. The deep tree cover was enhanced with intricate stone sculptures and imported giant tree trunks to simulate a place far away from city life in the savannas of Africa. We saw many beautiful animals and were glad to see that this zoo has immense barns hidden up in the woods that are air conditioned to allow the animals to live their incarceration in comfort. The lions were particularly impressive to watch lying up against a giant glass window outside an air-conditioned cabana. The majestic males and females lay with quiet power just beyond the plate glass reminding one how vulnerable a human would be standing in a field with the cats without proper weapons. We saw elephants, giraffes, chimps, crocs and more—but the primary focus where we spent most of the time was a large double-sided gorilla habitat. I was along for the ride until I met the gorillas up close and personal. And I discovered why she wanted to see them again.

One side of the habitat was a sanctuary for four males without females, ape bros who lived the good life with less reason to fight and injure each other without the need for competition. The other side was a family setting with one large, grizzled alpha male and several females and juveniles. I was particularly fascinated by the big male, Marcus (I called him Big Daddy), who sat near a windowed grotto where we could watch him for some time. He looked bored, angry sometimes, very expressive eyes and facial movements. The other apes would come and go. One juvenile male walked up to Big Daddy and threw a tree branch at his head, which I thought was a way to assert that he was a bad-ass dude, too, and this act of disrespect would cost him later in the day. It turns out that the gorillas are given these tree branches by the zoo staff as food (along with lettuce, kale, apples, tomatoes, etc.), eating individual leaves like salad on a stick—so the juvenile’s toss may have been an offering of respect after all. We watched several of the smaller gorillas walk by, sometimes playing, other times beating their chests in loud choruses of bravado. Then I noticed a medium-sized black-haired gorilla walk up out of a crater with arms hung low. She crouched and walked always with one arm near her belly as if carrying something—and then we saw that it was a tiny newborn baby. The mother never put it down. We learned that the infant was only three weeks old. Adorable.

Before we left the grotto bunker, Big Daddy stood up, raced toward the viewing glass, and pounded on it with both hands like the sound of thunder that reverberated off the rocks around us before running away again. That was yet another startling wake-up call, a bit disconcerting, about how small a human can be in the wild. The staff told us he was likely asserting his territory, no doubt weary of being gawked at by the people on the other side. These creatures were intelligent, surreal sentient beings, opposable hands on all limbs, giant, leathery, fascinating glimpses of humanness just on the other side of the plexiglass. More than once did I simply stand and watch them with the feeling that these animals were unreal avatars of themselves. I will not soon forget this immersive introduction to the great apes with faces and eyes that spoke beyond body language.

Part 2 of our mini vacay, the longer and (for me) most satisfying segment of the trip, was four days and nights at Surfside Beach, Texas. My family nearly always took a long drive from Indiana to Hunting Island, SC, every year to enjoy bonding and oceanside camping as I grew up, so the sea holds special memories. I have been to many Texas beach towns since moving to this state: Port Aransas (where I met a girl in 1982 that helped precipitate my move here), South Padre Island, Rockport, and South Corpus Christi. We usually like Port A, but it has grown immensely and lost some of its old charm to its popularity as a tourist destination.

Surfside was like a flashback to the 60s, 70s, and 80s—a gritty, blue-collar vibe with a host of friendly people of all races, creeds, and ethnicities and yet still was grounded in a fundamentally universal blend of hippie and redneck Americans living or visiting this unique seaside village on the Gulf of America. The “town” is barely a town at all and has few places to shop or dine. Mostly it is a long beach protected by a sea wall and jetty on the southern end of the island where merchant and petroleum freighters roll in now and then from the horizon like floating cities.

We did find a great local tourist souvenir shop called Surfside Loco as well as three good restaurants—the Seahorse Bar & Grill, Pachy’s Taqueria, and the Jetty Shack—where you could enjoy excellent fried shrimp (regular or cocoanut), breakfast tacos, and hamburgers, but the main essence of the village landscape are several blocks of beach houses up on stilts that you can rent. We found a nice house one block off the surf to save money, and it was wonderful to sit on the back porch and hear the ocean waves slamming into the sea wall, the seagulls, the squadrons of pelicans soaring over. The days were too hot to spend on the beach, but the mornings and evenings were perfect.

As for the vibe, this is the only place I can remember other than Las Vegas where you will find some places to sit down and eat where smoking is not only allowed, but it is regarded as normal and accepted as typical as a side of fries and a beer with a koozie brought to your table. At one venue, the guy who was frying our shrimp and onion rings had a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth. This is the good old days to a guy who stopped smoking over 20 years ago but never liked the way America shifted into a gentle authoritarianism in the 90s when alcohol was still okay, but tobacco painted a pariah on your back. So Surfside felt backwater free and easy for me, and everywhere we went were crusty, sun-baked native folks with a smile and a hello. Some people were rich, others poor, but everyone was equal and kind and welcome here.

As an aside, we took a spin one day up to Freeport across the bridge, hoping to find something more like a tourist town with a square and shops and plenty more restaurants, and found instead more of an old ghost-town of a residential and industrial and occasional shop or food joint—but the most remarkable part of that side trip was the feeling that we had driven into the valley of a dozen giant petroleum and LNG pipeline cities that reminded me of an industrial version of Slab City and East Jesus in Southern California. It was quite surreal to drive for miles along twisted steel pipes and burn-off vents rising on all sides like tinkertoy towers of convoluted tubing. There is a town in Freeport, which is more than I can say for Surfside, but it was not what we expected.

All that said, the time in Surfside was another good flashback for me: days on end in and near the healing power of the surf that drones endlessly into the mind, refreshing the spirit, slowing down the heart rate, reading books, streaming some shows, listening to music, sometimes doing nothing at all other than walking twice to the beach to soak it all in over and over like the waves. The smells, the heat, the sounds, the wildlife, and the people (and commerce) are all around you and on the edges of your daily routines mercifully interrupted for a few days. That is the mojo of the sea. If you want to feel the ocean a little more in the raw, Surfside is the place to be.