Padre Island

We decided to drive down to Padre Island National Seashore today to see if we could do the things that we were contemplating doing if we stayed there. We were a little concerned that Miss Doozie might be a wee bit on the large side for that campground.

Before we headed out though, some pictures from here at Mustang Island.

One of our neighbors here has an "adult tricycle". She let us try it out and it is VERY comfortable to ride! I have done a little more research on it, and since this one has the single tire in back it is called a "tadpole" and the comfortable low-down seat is a recumbent. Unfortunately it does not fold up, so we're not sure how we could carry something like this. They have a "toy hauler" 5th wheel and can put their Harley Davidson motorcycle as well as bicycles into it - it also opens out as a deck in the back which is nice if you're in a buggy area to not have to have your chairs on the ground.

A view down the campground from yesterday afternoon - it was a beautiful day yesterday (if a bit warm). By evening though, a thick fog had moved in, so no star-gazing last night.

A little closer view of Miss Doozie and the Jee-rage.

Today we wanted to go shopping for some food, pharmacy, and household items, so planned to head across the causeway into Corpus Christi. On the way, we headed south down to Padre Island National Seashore.

The end of the park road dumps you onto the beach. I had read that you could easily drive any vehicle the first 5 miles, and that the total distance before you hit a place that you could not drive through was 60 miles.

We drove a bit over 4 miles down (south/south west). There wasn't a lot of traffic - this fellow must have been down there fishing.

This was after we turned around and were heading north/north east. Beautiful!

There were funny little birds that would run like crazy when a wave went out, looking for food along the sand (the bird you can probably see in this picture is a larger bird - probably a seagull).

Two people had ridden their bicycles for a ways down the beach. They were stopped enjoying the waves.

There were a few RVs that had pulled off to boondock in this area. They were pretty close to where the road came out onto the beach.

This was the largest of the RVs that were out there - and it didn't have a tag axle, so definitely was not as big or heavy as Miss Doozie.

While we were in the National Seashore, we went by Malaquite Campground. I measured off (steps) and while we might fit, it would be tight and we would probably be hanging off the front and back of the campsite. Bird Island Basin would have been about the same but had fewer sites occupied, so we might have been able to park more diagonally and gotten out of the road area better. But... we decided that we like Mustang Island State Park better, and would stay here if we want to stay longer.

Right now, however, the plan is that tomorrow we will start heading west. We've looked at the weather, and by the 10 day forecast, it looks pretty cold in the western parts of Texas (actually, by Saturday, cold weather moves in). One place we wanted to visit is Marfa, and we'd want to see the "lights" (so would want to be outside at night). The forecast shows a low of 51 degrees on Friday night, which seems a reasonable temperature for being outside... so we're thinking that we'll start heading that way tomorrow. Of course, that might change before we start her up in the morning!