Padre Island National Seashore

After breakfast and a last walk to the jetty in Port Aransas, we took leave of our beach spot and headed south towards Padre Island.  Kind of a gray morning but it cleared up as we were traveling and made out to be another beautiful day here in Southern Texas.

Padre Island National Seashore is the world’s longest undeveloped stretch of barrier island.  So that is worthy of our Worlds Largest collection and will be tagged as such. This island is over 60 miles long and nearly the entire beach is drivable, if you have four-wheel drive.  For us common folk who only drive two wheels, the first five miles of beach is accessible, and after that the sand gets softer, requiring all four wheels to be driven.

Five miles is a lot of beach, however.  Most of the RV’s parked here are parked in the first mile, with the more adventuresome venturing farther out.  We found a rather large gap between two other RVs and claimed our spot, facing the RV so the door faces the water.

Before hitting the beach, we stopped at the visitor center to make lunch in the parking lot, and at the campground to take on fresh water and dump the waste tanks.  Probably the longest we have gone on 28 gallons of water: nearly a week.  We ran the freshwater tank dry flushing out the black tank, so we had nothing to spare.  Then on to the beach for some more beach camping.

After parking the RV and unloading the bikes, we also took out the chairs and sat for a donut.  This is only the second time the chairs have come out.  We’re not really beach-sitters.  We’ll walk or ride or something but usually not sit.

So this is us having our donut hour on the beach.

We took a long bike ride down the beach, covering about 9 miles, and then 9 miles back.  Kinda hard to imagine driving 60 miles of this beach, that’s just a LOT of beach.  And nearly entirely deserted except for a few campers in the first mile or two.