Corpus Christi and Padre Island

 

Corpus Christi looks small on the map, but after getting our bearings, it is really quite big, but easily navigable. Texas Hwy-358 (South Padre Island Drive) forms one of the main arteries for east-west travel.

The frontage roads are one-way, and it can get confusing to know the correct exit when trying to get to one of the local businesses along the frontage roads. Fortunately, you can weave back through local neighborhoods to loop back.

A long drive along Ocean Drive near the bay was typical of the historical areas in San Francisco (out near Pacific Heights) or Ocean Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. Expansive stone homes of different architectural styles on large lots.

Driving over the causeway, south to Padre Island you will enter a time a way from it all. The surf is gentle at the moment, and the little treasures on the shoreline vary day by day. The National Park has 70 miles of undeveloped grass and barrier land for all to explore.

We chose to stay at the ocean-side Malaquite Campground a 100 yards from the surf, as the beach access roads on Mustang Island were subject to high surf and flooding.

I like the thought of being on solid ground better than hard-packed sand.

The first day there were no shells or sea plant material. Just some clear jelly-like things that may have numbed one of my toes.

The next afternoon, there were more shells, and the Portuguese Man-of-War. In fact, there were several scattered along the tide-line.

The size ranged from one inch to five and some were still moving.

Tentacles under the float.

Cool looking colors.

The literature describes this creature not as one thing, but a ‘colony of hundreds of animals that live and work together’, including the ‘float,tentacles, and stinging cells’.

Another unexpected find, I gave to the visitor center. The volunteers showed me a 1/2 piece of shell and we identified it as the Calico Box Crab. They said my find was the largest they had ever seen (about 2”).

At first I thought maybe it was a turtle egg shell.

This is what a Calico Box Crab would look like.

Likewise, the park volunteers were eager to bestow upon us some of their finds. We left with a seabean. The Sea Heart seabean is just one of many shapes that originate from forest and tropical shores both near and far.

Various seabeans.

If we were to stay longer, we might come upon more unique things to the island. We see the tracks of the white-tail deer that inhabited the island along the path to the beach – spotted a buck munching on the plant matter on the beach.

One of the things we did not expect to see, was the controlled burn the Park Service is doing to prevent serious damage from lightning strikes. Yesterday, from noon to four, when we returned from town, they had flash burned more than 7K acres.

It was amazing how fast they could do so much in such short time. It was a partly cloudy day, and today is wet, so all is good on the fire front.

We are off to our next adventures.