We woke to a sunny, but windy morning. Bob found me this beautiful, blue rock before we left the campground. I like to collect unusual rocks.
The winds were out of the SE creating a crosswind as we left the island at 9:15. We crossed over that one-lane, narrow bridge that Bob loves so much.
The causeway over the bay was light on traffic.
It clouded up as we moved inland and the streets were wet like it had just rained. We started to get some sprinkles on the windshield, but we drove out from under that cloud. We turned off on Highway 286 out of Corpus Christi. These cool sailfish were painted on the bridge support pillars.
We took some smaller highways through the countryside to get to Highway 77 which would take us to South Padre Island. We skirted by a few little towns along this highway, but we were mostly in the country. There wasn’t much to see, except around the small towns. This piece of machinery traveling down the highway in the other direction was so big it took up both lanes of the highway. Now that’s a WIDE LOAD!
Highway 77 eventually turned into I-69. Diesel fuel prices seemed to be going higher especially along the Interstate.
We turned east on Highway 100 which would take us to South Padre Island. I saw this lighthouse in Port Isabel before we crossed the bridge. I love lighthouses!
We traveled along Highway 100 and crossed the bridge over the Laguna Madre Bay to the island and the city of South Padre Island. Bob swears that Texas has way too many bridges, although his bridge wasn’t too bad.
The water finally looked blue like in Florida. We could see the skyline of the city from the bridge.
All the waterways we’ve seen so far have been an ugly brown. In fact, we were told by some locals that the reason for the color is that the wind has been churning up the water for a few days and it is full of sediment. I’m glad we’ve finally seen some blue water.
When we were on Mustang Island at our last campground, we were very close to North Padre Island. The trouble is that there is no road that goes from one end of the island to the other. Most of the island is designated as the Padre Island National Seashore which separates the Gulf of Mexico from Laguna Madre, one of the few hypersaline lagoons in the world. The park protects 66 miles of coastline dunes, prairies, and wind tidal flats teeming with life. It is a safe nesting ground for Kemp’s ridley sea turtles and a haven for 300+ bird species. We could see the campground as we came over the bridge.
We arrived on the island and were welcomed by the signs.
We went about 300 yards on Padre Blvd. to find the KOA and pulled into the campground at 1:15 after our 4 hour drive and 195 miles.
We checked in and were lead to site #119, a pull through site, for the next two nights.
The campground was very empty, but the office staff told Bob that they were expecting about 30 campers today. According to them, the Snowbird season is over in March and this is a relatively slow time until it picks up with families after school gets out. The Office and the Commons buildings were old water tanks which were quite unusual.
We settled in and put on the AC right away. The temp was 84, but a little humid and still windy. Auggie got to stretch his legs outside while we got set up. We had a good view on the main street from the Office to see all the new campers arriving. We saw a steady stream of campers arriving in the park all afternoon. We have plans tomorrow to explore the island all the way to the end and maybe even do some driving on the beach. I have always wanted to visit South Padre Island and now my wish has come true. Auggie got his walk after dinner. There isn’t much grass around, so we headed off to the dog park where there was some grass on the walk there. We got about halfway to the dog park when Auggie stopped dead in his tracks and raised his paw. Looking more closely, he was covered in sand spurs that are extremely sharp. I spent some time carefully taking them out of his paws and his fur. I hurt myself a number of times trying to remove them because they are just so darn sharp! We spent the rest of our walk avoiding the grass,, walking on the road and letting Auggie sniff the bushes. Those spurs are nasty!