Days Twenty-Four through Twenty-Seven

Enough of Texas' big cities. Kudzu and I were ready to get back to the sun and surf for a while so we made the short drive to the Gulf Coast Friday morning and camped at Mustang Island State Park for a few days. Mustang Island is across the Intracoastal Waterway from Corpus Christi and just east of Padre Island National Seashore. Happily, there is very little to report about Mustang Island; just sun, sand, and peaceful waves. Unlike the other coastal parks we have visited, the areas on either side of Mustang Island are undeveloped for several miles so there is almost no one around. A few fishermen and surfers show up around the breakwaters early in the morning and late in the evening but otherwise Zoobley and I have had the place pretty much to ourselves. Zoobley and I have spent the last four days combing the beach and sleeping. The only drawback was the occasional snake crawling down the beach.

Yikes!

We did visit the small town of Port Aransas about fifteen minutes to the east a time or two. Port "A" as the locals call it is a really charming little vacation community that reminds me of what Panama City, Florida was like thirty of forty years ago. The rental houses are small, plain, and just a little dilapidated and there weren't any chain motels that I could see. There were lots of small, funky Mexican and seafood restaurants all of which were good. Beaman's Coffee Shop on Beach Street was a real treat with coffee ground fresh on site and overwhelming offerings of high calorie, high fat pastries. The amorphous little shop looked like the builder started in earnest without a plan and could never decide exactly what to create. It's like a cluttered house where you immediately feel comfortable. From the outside, it was hard to tell if the landscape or the building had come first.