Road Trip to Padre Island National Seashore

We've taken a couple of neat road trips in the past week. Tonight I'll tell you about the first...then perhaps tomorrow I can blog about the other one.

Curt had visited Padre Island National Seashore 42 years ago, before we met. He's often reminisced about it, so we decided to go visit again, since I'd never been there. From Rockport we have to go through Corpus Christi, so we ran a few errands while we were in the "big city." Actually, CC is known as the "Sparkling City."

From there you take a bridge over to North Padre Island. And you drive through a lot of flat land and scrub, and finally, out in the middle of nowhere, you find the Park. 

 

 

Side note: I  don't know if all of you are aware of the Senior pass for National Parks, but if you aren't, be sure to pick one up at the entrance of any National Park, National Monument, National Historic Site, National Wildlife Refuge, etc. it costs all of $10 (though you do have to be at least 62) and it lasts for life (as long as you don't lose it, like we did our first one). It gets you and everyone in your vehicle into the Park for free, and it works for any Federal Fee area. One of the greatest deals in traveling!!

Padre Island is one of the largest unspoiled, undeveloped stretches of seashore in the U.S. It's absolutely beautiful!

In some places you can drive right up onto the beach, and then drive along it for miles. Naturally, there are some parts of the National Park where you can't do that,

There's quite a nice Visitor Center with some very interesting and informative displays...everything from history to ecology, to flora and fauna. 

This is a model of the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle, above, which is endangered and is making a comeback at the National Seashore. Below is a display showing a clutch of the eggs, and the baby turtles working their way up to the surface.

And we found this display to be VERY interesting. Forgive the glare...it was outdoors, and the plexiglass picked up lots of reflections. But if you can enlarge the photo a bit on your computer or tablet, you can see how long it takes for some of the common everyday plastic items we use to disintegrate, or biodegrade. This was a real eye opener for us, and we're going to make an extra effort to remember our reusable grocery bags...since the single use ones take 20 years to biodegrade if they're not recycled. Here was the real shocker: it said that disposable diapers last 450 years!!! That may very well be true, but I'm wondering how they know that? They haven't been around for nearly that long!

Back out on the beach, we enjoyed the solitude of being the only ones there with just the birds for company, on such a blustery day. Here are some Royal Terns...

 

And a couple different varieties of gulls:

   

It was mesmerizing to watch the waves rolling in. I could do that for hours!

Then we drove for miles along the beach until we made it to Mustang Island and Port Aransas:

Saw a couple of cold & hungry looking feathered friends along the way:

And one man was flying all these kites: 

Once at Port Aransas, the only way to get to Rockport is by ferry. It's a free ferry and there are several that run constantly during the day and less frequently at night. A very short ride...less than 10 minutes. But it sure is handy to have the ferry to bridge the gap!

We JUST missed the first ferry, so we were first in line for the next one. That gave us a great view!

Almost there!

Crossing the Intracoastal Waterway, which runs the whole length of the eastern U.S, from New Your, around the peninsula of Florida, and ends up at Brownsville, Texas...and even goes right by our little cottage at Fulton Beach.

  

And then back home again. What a great way to spend a cold and windy winter day!