I'm waiting to pick up my new glasses and just hanging around the Corpus Christi area. Padre Island National Seashore lies a couple miles off the Corpus Christi coast and stretches almost down to Brownsville. Yesterday I picked up TX 361 in Aransas Pass, got a free ferry ride to Port Aransas on Padre Island and then followed 361 another 20-25 miles to the National Seashore. The National Seashore extends south another 50 miles, all of it totally undeveloped.
I followed directions to the Malaquite Beach Campground and signed on for three nights. Then, as usual, I drove around a little, checking things out. To my dismay I found two areas for free camping. One was the Bird Island Basin Boat Ramp that has plenty of hard packed sandy areas available for camping. Then the first five miles of South Beach are suitable for two wheel drive and you can camp anywhere along this stretch. Beyond that requires four wheel drive. Since Malaquite Beach doesn't have hot showers I was really ticked off at finding these free camping areas.
Another cold front moved in and with it, 20-30 knot winds. I tried taking a walk on the beach this morning but the wind was still too ferocious and I had to turn back. You're not supposed to walk on the sand dunes. Aside from the ecological damage you can do, they offer another incentive. The dunes and grasslands are full of rattlesnakes. I saw several critter holes along the path that look just the right size for a fat-ass rattlesnake. They also warn of Portuguese Man-of-War on the beaches that can issue a severe sting as well as a blue jellyfish. The park is full of coyotes. I didn't see any but did see some tracks I thought might have been a small dog. There were no people prints in the area. Later, two ladies camping on the beach reported seeing a couple playing on the beach in the moonlight.
I planned on launching from the entrance to South Beach. 4-5 lines of 2-3 foot breakers extended out from the beach during the upper third of the tide. Not having paddled much in the past month or so I was really anxious to get out there. The weather precluded that though and I had to content myself with just sitting in the truck and watching them. While sitting there I watched 125-150 white pelicans soaring together in the high winds. Actually they were more like raw recruits at boot camp trying to march together. They were always out of sync but nobody crashed and burned.
In one of the prairie areas I watched what I took to be 10 sandhill cranes feeding. I wasn't close enough to see the color of their heads but the size and shape was right.