1 Feb 2019
I thought this was going to be a light day - not so much!! Wow, we did a lot and had fun. Warmer today but very overcast. Drizzle was off and on. We decided to go ahead and drive south to Padre Island and make the best of it.
It did not take us long to get across the bridge that connects Corpus Christi and Padre Island.
Once you cross the bridge you can either go straight, curving right (south) and you are headed down Padre Island and ultimately the National Seashore. If you turn left, you enter Mustang Island and ultimately Port of Aransas.
There is only one road that divides Padre Island and that road only goes a ways then ends. Vehicles can then choose to drive on the beach quite a ways further down the island, but we only drove into the National Seashore park and stop at the Malaquite Visitor Center. On the way we made the mandatory stop at the Park Headquarters and used our National Parks pass to gain entrance.
A little further down we arrived at the Malaquite Visitor Center parking lot. We can only imagine the huge numbers of tourists that visit this place in the summer as there are probably 500 or more parking spaces in this parking lot! Needless to say we had no trouble finding a parking spot today. There were probably five vehicles there.
We made our way through the Malaquite Pavilion and out onto the beach.
The waves were pounding hard and there were many warning of rip tide currents. The water temperature was about 61F The sound of the waves crashing and the wind was almost deafening. The sand was very soft and the beach was quite clean.
A ways further down the beach there is a lot of trees, wood and other debris piling up on the beach. We saw this on TV last night. This is due to the wind and weather lately. They are working hard with heavy equipment top clean it all up.
So, we walked a ways down the beach and back, and Doreen picked up a few small seashells, very few!
We headed back to the pavilion and looked over the displays inside along with the gift shop. The pavilion offers some great views from the decks.
We then started back towards the entrance. On the way we found the campground and thought we would check it out. It is just a parking place - no electric, water or sewer hookup except for the camp host. Even with that, there were a lot of campers there.
Even on the beaches there were folks camping, also no hookups.
The wind seems like it would be challenging as I doubt it lets up very much here. Also, your rig would be coated in salt, so you would have to stay on top of that!
So we drove back the way we came, and headed on north to Mustang Island and Port of Aransas, the northernmost point on Mustang Island. Our first stop there was the Port of Aransas Museum. The primary reason for stopping there is this museum holds the fourth order Fresnel lens from the Aransas Pass Lydia Ann Lighthouse. This lighthouse is only accessible from boat, but can be viewed from the shore at Port of Aransas. Besides this lens, the museum has a historic display of local ship information as well as the history on surfing here! Some pictures:
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| Many historical displays |
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| The fourth order Fresnel lens from the Aransas Pass lighthouse, used from 1865 to 1954. |
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| Part of the surfing history display here. |
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| Doreen hauling in the big one! |
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| The original oil lamp used to produce the light, amplified by the lens. Was used in the lighthouse before it was electrified in 1920 |
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| Very old panoramic photos of Port of Aransas. |
We got directions from the museum staff of the best place to try to get a glimpse of the lighthouse and we made our way down to the shore. Sure enough, there it was!!
This is an iPhone picture, expanded and enhanced a bit with software, but it still did not come out too bad. The museum also had the stamps so Doreen got her lighthouse passport stamped! She was thrilled.
The museum staff also suggested we stop at the Farley Boat Works to see some great wooden boats and a Gulf Coast Scow Schooner being built. This place is awesome. They specialize in wooden boats and they actually run a school that teaches you how to build a boat, and they will mentor you in the process! How cool is that! Here are a few pictures:
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| Rear part of the shop |
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| Front part of the shop |
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| Various templates used to build boats |
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| Some very old tools still used to build wooden boats |
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| The drawing of the Gulf Coast Scow Schooner used to build it |
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| A plywood boat built here |
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| Beautiful old Farley boat |
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| Part of a collection of old outboard motors |
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| Another old Farley wooden boat |
I wished we could have spent more time there as they had hundreds of pictures in slide shows that illustrated the boat building process and documentation of various boats they have built.
When we returned to the campground we met a couple across the street. Mike is retired Air Force First Sergeant and his wife also served. They live in Idaho but were stationed in Alaska, served in Baghdad and many other places. Now that they are retired they are also traveling all over the place camping and so we had a lot to discuss! It was an honor to give the First Sergeant one of my coins and thank him for his service as a crew chief and First Sergeant!
We have not yet mapped out tomorrow but we may drive into downtown Corpus and further explore the area.
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