Gulf of Mexico - a Day at the Beach

Friday, February 26, 2010

I simply cannot believe how dumb some people really are.  We were awakened this morning by the loud voices of our neighbours from Kansass.  There were four couples travelling together but unfortunately we were placed between them. Our site for the last few days has been a beehive of activity as people passed around and through it.  Anyway that all ended about 6:30 this morning when they started hooking up their rigs to leave.  It seemed that they had to do everything together and they were totally oblivious to the time of day.  Jerry managed to fall back to sleep for a short time, when we were again woken by the sound of the neighbour’s motor home alarm.  The siren continued for about 10 minutes while the dolt tried to figure out how to silence it. When he was successful that only lasted for a few minutes before it sounded again., and again for another 12 to 15 times. This continued off and on for about an hour.  Janet overheard the fellow talking to his buddy saying that he didn’t know how to turn it off.  Not that she was eavesdropping – they were outside our bedroom window. (The sites are only 18 feet wide!)  Apparently it was something on his key fob…go figure.  They spent the next couple of hours trying to close one of the slide rooms on a different unit (this is a relatively new brand of rig called  Open Range, which has individual electric motors operating the slide rooms independently – not good advertising for this unit.)

We waited for these folks to get away before we ventured out.  We then drove  the 27 miles to South Padre Island.  I don’t know what I was expecting when I got there but I wasn’t expecting the well established tourist resort that is here.  High-rise hotels, condos, restaurants, gift shops and surf shops; they all run along the main street that stretches for about a mile to the edge of the developed area.  The road then continues north outside of town with the Gulf of Mexico, just to the east occasionally obscured by huge sand dunes and on the west is the Laguna Madre and the intercoastal waterway.  There are about 6 access points to the beach before you reach the end of the road and the unofficial start of the South Padre Island National Seashore.  There are many vehicles driving on the packed sand of the beach, although we chose to walk in from the road. 

Janet was like a little kid when we got to the ocean.  She had an armful of seashells in a few minutes and I was back to the truck to get what turned out to be the first of two bags for the shells.  The day was perfect, bright sunshine with a temperature around 22 degrees Celsius.  The water was a little cooler and we didn’t see anyone swimming; but there were a large number of surf fishermen.  We didn’t see them land any fish, though. We spent about an hour and half on the beach collecting shells and soaking up the sun.  We saw a few trailers and motor homes parked along the beach.  I suppose these would be great places to camp but we have gotten used to running water and electricity in our trailer.

We crossed the bridge back towards Brownsville and stopped in Port Isabel.  This is small community that also caters to the tourist trade.  The town centres around the lighthouse which was constructed in 1853 and was used until 1905.  It’s light could be seen 15 miles out to sea.  We climbed the 74 steps and the three ladders to the light room and took a number of pictures from the gallery looking toward South Padre Island.  We roamed around the dock area for a little while and then headed back to our trailer.