After a week of almost constant wind the beach sure isn’t very pleasant looking or smelling!
We left Port O’Connor with high hopes, we we were going to spend 1 week camping on the beach in Port Aransas. It’s another 2 hours south, almost to Corpus Christi. The town is bigger than Port O’Connor and much more touristy. I can see why it’s popular with spring breakers here, the beach is free, you can camp right on it for $10/night if you do it in the county park portion or you can camp for free along beach road for 3 nights. Beach road goes on for about 20 miles or so.
The day we got there, April 10, was beautiful! Sunny and warm. We stayed at I.B. Magee Beach park, a Nueces county run park, just a few minutes walk to the main beach in the town. Spacious sites but barren, no trees or shade to be found, We checked out the beach, nice and wide, and the water was clear and warm, about 77F. Just enough wave action to maybe try surfing. Much nicer than it looks in the pic above.
So much for first impressions. Next day, Mother nature kicked up the wind and conditions went downhill from there. For the entire time we were there, the wind was a bitch. It blew from the east continually at about 23 - 27 mph but it gusted up to 50. That meant sand EVERYWHERE! And I really do mean EVERYWHERE! We tried leaving the trailer windows open to take advantage of the breeze (it was hot) but sand ended up coating the inside the trailer. Finally had to breakdown and shut it down tight and use the AC. Just imagine the crap that was stuck on the exterior of the trailer...sigh!
Cooking outside was a challenge. We put up a tarp around the picnic table/shelter just to keep the propane stove & BBQ flames from blowing out. Even when they stayed lit, everything we tried to cook was a bit gritty.
Just being outside was miserable. Got sandblasted, free exfoliation though. Between the sunscreen and salt water blown by the wind on us, our skin was perfectly primed for sand to stick to it. Putting on lip balm was a huge mistake! We attempted to at least walk on the beach every day for about an hour. Had to walk right along the shore line to avoid the sand. But a different obstacle presented itself there. When we arrived there was a little bit of seaweed around. By the middle of the week is was mounded up by the shoreline, about 6 ft of it. By the end of the week, the wind and waves had beaten the mounds of seaweed across the entire width of the beach and eroded a ton of sand.
Swimming was also next to impossible. Water was really rough, extra warning about rip currents were posted everywhere and it was full of that lovely seaweed. Actually only saw a few die hards in the water while we were there and of course the kite surfers. Only people like them would enjoy these weather conditions...right Terry and Ian?
We did take a drive one day to check out Mustang Island State Park (not impressed, not set up for big rigs in their campground) and Padre Island National Park. It was nicer but again, their limited camping spots weren’t set up for big rigs and no thanks, don’t want to camp on the beach ever again after what we’ve experienced. Also did a quick drive around Corpus Christi. It‘s much bigger than I thought it would be, busy, busy, not somewhere we’d want to spend much time.
Of course the day we left (April 17), the bad weather system had pushed it’s way thru, it was gorgeous out! Sunny, no wind and surf was back to normal. Figures!!! But we’ve got to move on. Need to be in Arizona for May 6th so gotta start heading west.
Check out our beach pictures...don’t have as many as I’d hoped to since I didn’t want to expose my good camera to the sand. Had some other pics on another camera but can’t get them to download.