Padre Island Trip
This past weekend my son and I join the Texas Rovers for a trip to Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi. It’s the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and you’re allowed to drive on the beach for its entire length. Mom stayed home because she had other obligations so it was just a ‘guy’s weekend’.
The drive down was cold, wet, and windy in the Defender. We were bundled up for the 50degree temps that came along with the first cold front of fall. We hooked up with a couple other Land Rovers and headed south. By the time we hit Corpus temps were back up to 70+ and sunny. We finally could shed the jackets. Next time I’ll watch weather a bit closer and maybe put the full top on the truck so we don’t have to freeze.
We hit the beach around 2pm and started driving south. We were due to meet the rest of the group somewhere around mile 38. We were the first folks on the beach so we went in search of a campsite. Once we got south of mile marker 25 there was no one on the beach. We found out why no one was camping south of there. There had been a bad red tide earlier in the week and it had killed thousand of fish. Then a very high tide came through and washed them all up on the beach right where you’d camp. The smell was awful. We turned around and found another Land Rover headed our way and met them around mile 23 where we set up camp.
My son immediately hit the beach and started playing in the sand. Well, he played in what sand there was. We were on Big Shell beach. Named appropriately for the fact that for large sections of the beach it is shell. You can’t even see sand through all the shells. Can be a bit uncomfortable in bare feet. 🙂 After he played for a while we setup a campfire with driftwood found on the beach and cooked hotdogs over it. We sat around the fire in the dark and watched for satellites in the dark skies.
I woke up early before dawn on Saturday and stepped out of the tent. The skies were so full of stars it almost hurt your eyes to look at it. You couldn’t process so many stars and picking out constellations was nearly impossible. Saturday was going to be a totally free day. Dakota played on the beach for hours while I watched and BS’ed with the other guys. He begged so I went and played in the water with him for a while. I grew up in San Diego and wasn’t used to how shallow the beach was. We were 100 yards offshore and I was only in water to my waist. The highlight of my trip was seeing a sea turtle swimming between my legs.
After a while we hopped in the truck for a drive up the beach. We stopped at a fishing spot on the bay side. It felt like we were 4 Land Rovers in the middle of nowhere. You couldn’t see any cars, people, buildings, or anything out there. When we got back to camp we went out on a firewood run as we’d burned everything near camp. We ended up dragging a good sized stump to the fire with the truck and burned that too. We had brought s’mores fixings and the group ate all we had. I’m glad we brought a dozen chocolate bars. We spent the rest of the night listening to Chris play his guitar and sing.
Sunday we packed up and hit the road by 9am for the long drive home.