May 10, 2021 Padre Island

 

 

May 10, 2021

 

 

 

My humans took me to the biggest potty box I have ever seen!  I wanted to see more of it but I was kind of scared.

Shriek! Shriek! Shriek! It is almost midnight, I have been asleep for about an hour and the smoke alarm is shrieking!  I quickly open windows to let the gale force winds in.  I wake Spouse.  There is no smoke so I am not sure what is going on.  Spouse!  He asks what’s going on.  I point to the smoke detector.  He isn’t convinced.  I AM!!!  He can’t really hear it!  I finally convince him to grab the shrieking device and he puts it directly to his ear and jumps back.  This is it he declares…  DUH!  He removed the battery and silence is golden…  His hearing is getting sooooo bad.

This morning, we got up, made some breakfast food to go and headed down to Padre Island at the seashore.  Once you pass the entry kiosk, you pass a nature trail through the hummocks, some beach access points and the visitor center.  At the end of the road is access to 70 miles of shoreline. 

About Padre Island:  It is a barrier island protecting the east Texas coast.  While it is 100 miles long, it is only about a mile or two wide.  It is here, on the windward side where the Ridley turtles lay their eggs.  It is about 100-200 feet from the water across the sand to the dunes where they deposit their eggs.  They then head back to sea.  Once the babies hatch, they make a run for the ocean.  If the birds don’t  get them, they have a decent chance of survival.  This habitat is crucial for their survival.  The national seashore is all about protecting the turtles.  Kind of…

Now let’s talk about the humans.  The entire 70 mile seashore is accessible to vehicles and camping.  The first 5 miles are easy.  After the 5 mile marker, 4 wheel drive with high clearance is recommended.  There are NO bathroom facilities of any kind.  None…  So if you don’t bring your ‘bathroom’, I betcha you share the dunes with the turtles. 

I am going to use a 4 letter word to describe the first 5 miles of the shoreline.  I will try not to offend you but there are only 4 letter words to describe it.   TRASH!  GARBAGE! WASTE!

The amount of trash on the beach for those first 5 miles is embarrassing.  I know… yesterday was mother’s day and lots of people were enjoying the beach.  And true, some of the trash is what washes up on shore.  But a whole lot of trash is left behind by humans.  It is embarrassing.

We continue on and the further we get, the less trash we see.  We park the truck and start walking.  It is about 7:30, 75 degrees ish and quite windy.  It is really quite comfortable for walking.  The things that wash up on shore have stories to tell.  From where is this coconut?  Jamaica?  Cuba?  I wonder where this shoe with all the barnacles on it originated.  And all this plastic… bags, bottles, buckets…  Spouse headed back to the truck but I kept on.  I saw a channel marker that had been ripped from its foundation.  Was that from a hurricane?  After a while, Spouse pulled up in the truck and we went as far as the 15 mile marker and did not see one turtle.  I am not surprised… as scuba divers, we did not see a whole lot of turtles when diving the Caribbean, so it should not surprise us that land sightings would be any different!  And we also did not see a lot of vehicles.  To all you Ridley turtles that are reading this… I so apologize for the litter we leave on your beaches and if it were within my power to clean it up for you, I would.

On our way out of the park, we decided to stop and walk the nature trail through the hummocks.  Unfortunately, we were past most of the flower bloom.  About half way through the walk…HOLY MOLY! Those are blood sucking varmints all over our legs!  Swat!  Let’s get out of here!  One got in the truck…  he didn’t live to tell his friends…

After a quick stop at a real market that didn’t have much more of a selection than WalMart, we stopped at Hannah and cleaned up.  We put a new battery in the smoke detector.  We then headed north.   There is a lot of development in this area.  Houses are built on stilts in little communities.  Some are on inlets with docks.  I am sure they are built hurricane ready. 

When we got to Port Aransas, we found a tiny place for lunch.  Thai, sushi, poke.  Spouse had looked at the GPS and told me we are either having pizza or sandwiches.  I said if we actually looked out our windows instead of being attached to the GPS we would find something more palatable.  I was right!

Port Aransas is a beach town, with beachy stores.  There are lots of RV parks (I am so happy we are where we are tho!).  Beachy beachy beachy.  We were going to cross over the bridge to Corpus Christi, but the GPS took us to a ferry.  NO!  We don’t want a ferry… oh… from here it is the only way to go.  And she took us down the wrong street…  I hate our GPS at times…  Actually, she has done ok most of the time. We will learn to co-exist I am sure.

Well, since we didn’t want to wait for a ferry, we went home to Hannah and relaxed. 

We decided to drive Rudy over to the beach to see his reaction.  There were not a lot of people there and it was windy.  I opened the door and extended his leash and attached it and gently put him on the sand.  Like a scene from a cartoon, the wind wrapped the leash around my legs, freaked Rudy and he jumped back into the truck.  I unravelled myself, then shortened the leash and tried again.

He was scared at first but them did some exploring.  He was trying to find his way home, but that wasn’t going to happen.  We had him on the leash so he felt more comfortable with his humans there to protect him as he sniffed around the dunes.

Although we could take our rig down to the beach, I can only imagine how difficult it would be to keep it clean!  No thank you!  Cleaning Rudy’s paws (and my paws too) was enough!

We also noticed so many palm trees have their crowns totally destroyed by wind.  I don’t think they like it here!