Paradise Found – Padre Island, Texas

Two days just isn’t enough.  I only booked three nights so we could we could hop around on the Texas Gulf Coast.  That meant we only had two full days here.  It wasn't enough.  

We have been very busy doing next to nothing as you can tell by the pictures below.  The problem with doing nothing at the beach with the sun and salt air is that it makes you very tired when you head back to reality but we certainly loved it.

Resident brown pelicans on the fishing pier at the RV park.

Duchess on her morning stroll before we headed out for the day.  She loves barking at the waves.

I love it here.  Why is it so far from where we spend our summers in Washington? 

More people always show up at the beach on the weekend.  We noticed that on Sunday when we did exactly the same thing.  The first place we stopped was beach road number 5.  It was a beach you could drive on with miles and miles of packed sand.  We had just arrived when we got caught by the Turtle Patrol.  It’s not quite free but almost.  For $12 a year you can drive on the beach and camp on it in many places.  Can you imagine a whole year’s entertainment for $12? !!  In this location we had lots of free space.  No one was real close and it definitely wasn’t packed.  We thought it close to Paradise for sure.

Not everyone wants to drive on the beach.  There were several large parking lots at some of the piers.  I’m thinking that maybe parking in a lot is free but I have no clue.  We're tagged to December 2014 so we're good no matter where we decide to park.   There were rest rooms, a restaurant and even a campground with electricity and water plus a dump on site.

This section of the beach was starting to get some oil splotches from the recent oil spill.  The “Turtle Patrol” warned us about the oil and easy removal techniques should we get some on us.

On Monday we decided to venture to another beach.  This time we went just a few more miles south to Padre Island National Seashore. Talk about empty …. we pretty much had a large section of beach all to ourselves.

There were campers right along the beach.  We had seen several different areas to park an RV.  In some places you pay for hookups and in other places, you don’t.  Again, Paradise Found.

We did discover the birds knew what potato chips were.  When we first arrived we put our chairs way too close to the water’s edge.  We had to move back three times.  One time we spilled the potato chips.  The birds seemed to figure that people meant snacks.  Here’s Sandi running up and down the beach – no food but the birds ran up and down with her hoping she had some.  It was funny but also annoying.

Sandi got right into the enjoyment of it --- beach, swim, read and relax.  Of course, we joined in that activity too.

Read

Read some more

Mine!

We saw lots of migrating birds.

Duchess enjoyed the day too.

After spending hours on the beach we decided to check out Bird Basin.  Bird Basin is a popular windsurfing spot.  There were plenty of them there.

This was the bridge back from Padre Island to Corpus Christi.  You can see some of the oil in the water on the right side of the picture..

Of course, even Paradise has its downsides.  For instance, there is the wind, there is the humidity and there is the frizzy hair. Tuesday we were even reacquainted with the fog or was it just low clouds?  That's when we visited the USS Lexington.

We really enjoyed the tour.  They've turned the ship into a museum.

Then, we stopped at the Pier 99 Restaurant for lunch.  Sandi and I ordered a bowl of clam chowder and Terry ordered a hamburger.  It was great sitting outside.  What wasn’t great was the food.  Our bowl of clam chowder was delivered in a cup but we were both pretty happy we didn’t have to eat a whole bowl. In addition to being lukewarm it was tasteless.   Oh well, the setting was pretty nice.

Sandi isn’t wearing a jacket because she’s cold.  She’s wearing it to keep the sun off her sunburn.

I’m in the market for a new camera.  It was either a new camera or a new battery charger since the one I had has gone missing.  I opted for the new camera and not wasting the $40 on the charger.  In the meantime my iPhone has been busy snapping pictures.  Of course, that’s another story and another blog.

Like I said when I started this blog, we had only booked three nights originally in this area.  That only gave us two full days.  It wasn’t enough so we added two more.  

Anyone else happy with Millenicom upping their cost for WiFi?  I think we’ll be searching for an alternative to that!!

(PS – I’ll give you info on the camping around here later.  I’m running close to my self-imposed maximum word count for this blog.)

‘Tis life on the road.