Ride to Mansfield Pass, Padre Island

We were expecting to leave Mustang Island SP on Friday, February 6, but  the weather on the 5th was bad and I really wanted to make the ride to the south end of Padre Island with my new riding buddy, Jim from Iowa. We discussed the options and decided to ride on Friday. That is another great thing about  this lifestyle, no set plans.

I checked the tide tables and thought a 9:30 AM start should be good for a ride down the island. I mounted a 5 gallon gas can on the back rack of my KTM 450 and we took off. We stopped in town to fill both our bikes and I put about 4 gallons in the can. We rode down to the Padre Island National Seashore and onto the sand. We rode down to the 10 mile mark and refilled both bikes and hid the can in the dunes. We had 100 miles of riding on the beach in front of us before we got back to the gas. I was pretty sure I could make it, but I have never ridden in sand for that long and I was not sure what it might do to my MPG.

Here is a shot of the my KTM and Jim's Yamaha WR250R:

This is a very isolated area. There are two major currents that meet off shore. The result is lots of stuff gets washed up on the beach. Much of it is so large it would not make sense to remove it. We saw this large tank that has become a graffiti target.

Much of the beach has very few shells. There are a few places where there are tons of shells. Here is what they call large shell beach.

There are a few buoys that have washed ashore. 

Here we are at mile 60. That was a long ride at the 25 mile speed limit. We kept it fairly close to the limit...most of the time;) 

Here is the Mansfield Jetty. That is the end point and the dividing line between Padre Island and South Padre Island.

If you look closely, there is an old shipwreck in this picture:

The good news is we made it on gas. When I got back to the 10 mile mark, i was quite relieved to see our gas can. i had about a half gallon left in my tank. We ended up riding 170 miles total. It was a fun ride and I am really glad I did it. Thanks, Jim!

I went down to the pier to go fishing, but the surf was so heavy, I could not fish, so I took this video:

Turn the sound up and you might get the sensation of standing out at the end of the jetty on a large rock and having the waves crashing all around you. It really was an awesome feeling. 

Enjoy your day.

More fishing and what we do on a rainy day

We have been hanging out at Mustang Island State Park for the last few days. It is not the prettiest campground, but the short walk to the beach makes it a very nice spot. My main objective for the first part of the week was to do some more fishing. I would love to catch some fish to eat, but I also wanted to catch one of the game fish. Either a speckled trout or a red drum would do. Well, after catching some more whitings, I caught this Red Drum:

It is not legal to keep this fish. It has to be 20 inches, so I threw him back.

















While I was fishing these two guys came out to do some surfing on this cool day. It looked cold to me. They only lasted about 30 minutes.

While I was out on the jetty, I decided to go out and try to fish off the end. The surf was pretty heavy, but I wanted to try anyway. Then something really cool happened. A pod of dolphins were surfing in the waves just off the end of the jetty. I tried, but failed to get them on video, but it was one of those moments that I will remember for a long time. They played out there for about 15 minutes. It was awesome. 

On Tuesday, February 3, it rained all day. I took the opportunity to go in and get the oil changed and have the fuel filters replaced on the truck. I have found that it is cheaper to have the oil changed on the diesel at a dealership. I think they make it affordable to get your information and then market to you. I have now had my oil changed in Pensacola, Florida, Montrose, Colorado and Corpus Christi, Texas. 

After doing the oil change we had lunch at our favorite Fast Food burger joint, Whataburger. They are based here in Corpus Christi. Then we went to the dollar theater and watched "Unbroken" It was a good movie, but a much better story. 

When I got back from fishing on Tuesday, I noticed a new person from Iowa had parked in the campground. He had a Yamaha WR 250R in the back of his truck. I stopped and talked to Jim for a minute and we may go for a ride later this week. Tune back in to see if we make that happen. I think we should, just the other day I was wishing I had someone to ride with and poof he appeared. 

Back to Mustang Island

On Friday, January 30 we left Padre Island National Seashore. We really liked it there. It is a great place to come in the winter and be warmer on the beach and enjoy the solitude.

We drove the short distance back to Mustang Island SP and set up camp. We decided to come back here to do some fishing and to wait out a cold front before we move back a bit north and west.

I went out fishing on the jetty. I found that the jetty was creating a leeward side that was holding fish. I caught about 5 fish in about 2 hours of fishing. The gulf was significantly more angry, but it was still a fun day of fishing.

Here is a picture of one of the whiting I caught. I threw all of them back.

I went fishing again on Saturday. I fished for about 4 hours and caught about 15 fish including this Porgie:

I kept a couple of  whiting to see if they tasted good. BTW, They did. Not much meat, but not bad.

We had a visit from our great niece, Halle. I really enjoyed our time together. 

John and Erin came to get Halle and stopped for a while. I made creole gumbo for dinner. We had a nice visit.  It is great to see friends and family while we are traveling. 

On Super Bowl Sunday, we went to church and then to a place called Charlies Pasture Nature Preserve. It has a trail/board walk that is about a mile long. We did not get to see a large number of exotic birds, but plenty of ducks, egrets and Ibis.

We did not get any great pictures of birds, but we did see a cool looking wood duck and a Snowy Egret.

The Nature Preserve was right along the waterway into the port of Corpus Christi. We saw some large tankers coming in.

I like this one with the Blue Heron standing in front. 

Then we came back to the rig and watched the Super Bowl. Good game with some very aggressive coaching calls by Pete Carroll. Some would call them bad decisions, but that is what it takes to win. You have to have thick skin to be a professional coach. I just enjoyed the great game. 

We will hang out here and do some fishing for a week or so. Then we will move a bit north. Have a great day!

Padre Island National Seashore

On January 27, 2015 we left Mustang Island State Park and drove the  20 miles down the barrier islands to Padre Island National Seashore. This is the longest section of undeveloped barrier islands in the US. You can drive on the beach for over 60 miles. The camping in the campground is kind of tight with not much room between rigs, but we have a view of the gulf. We could not see the water from the campground at MISP. They do not have water or electric at the sites, but we are good boondocking for a few days. We have minimal cell signal here, but we do have 3 TV channels. We are not totally isolated from the world like we were in Colorado last year. The rate is $8 per night, which is very reasonable. You can camp on the beach for free. We were surprised to see some big class A motorhomes out on the sand.

Here are some pictures of the campground:

Here is the view out the back window. The cool thing is we had sunrises directly out the back window. That did mean that we had to get out of bed in the morning, but it was worth it.

The first day, I went for a 2 hour, 5 mile walk on the beach and only saw one person.

On the second day, I took a long ride on my motorcycle to see how far down the island I dare went. I made it 25 miles. It was a fun ride, but at about 10 miles down, the fog rolled in and the visibility became difficult. I had to wait for a while to continue. The sand started getting deep at about mile 25 and I decided to turn around. It was a very unique experience. I would love to do it with another rider some day. Listening Bob F.?

After I went for my ride, Kim told me about a turtle release they were doing in the park. The seashore is important habitat for the endangered Kemps Ridley Sea Turtle. There was a huge group that had come out to watch them release about 200 turtles. These were not babies. These were some turtles that had been rescued for different reasons and were now being released back into the wild.

They were really cute and we enjoyed the experience. There were many preschool aged kids that were there to watch. Of course they took the opportunity to get wet and play in the surf. It looked like a summer day in January.

We ended up staying three days. I would love to be better set-up for boondocking and go down on the beach and stay a couple of weeks. Maybe someday we will do that.

Here are a few more beach and bird pictures. The birds were all really fun to watch.

We are getting ready to move back a bit north. We will drop the trailer in storage for 10 days or so and drive the truck north to Missouri to take care of some business and get my motorcycle relicensed before we head west. Life is a beach.

Port Aransas, Texas

We have been hanging out at Mustang Island State Park for the past 7 days (1/20 –27/15). Just down the Island about 12 miles is the small fishing town of Port Aransas. I really like this little town. Kim’s sister and brother in law have a townhouse just off the beach in Port A, as the locals call it. We met up with them on Sunday after church and had lunch and took a little tour of the town. We took the tour via golf cart. That is right, you can legally drive a golf cart on the city streets. Halle was with us and she had a few specific stops we needed to make. She likes to go inside the shark at this store.

We saw that a shrimp boat was going out that night and would be back in the morning at 9AM with fresh shrimp. I decided it was worth the effort to get up at the crack of 8 to make the drive over and get some shrimp. When I arrived, there was a long line and I was concerned that I would not get any. The good news is that they had plenty. I bought  5 pounds and started planning how I would prepare them.

When I got back, I went out on the Jetty and fished for most of the day. I only caught this one catfish, that is not good to eat. It was a beautiful day and I really enjoyed just walking around on the rocks and watching the birds and dolphins and other wildlife.

Later in the afternoon, Kim came down and brought lunch. She is awesome! We went down to the beach and found a quiet spot and had lunch. We saw more dolphins from there and had a nice time enjoying the beautiful afternoon. Zoom in to see the dolphin:

I don’t normally take pictures of food, but I will make an exception here. I de-headed all of the shrimp and packed them in zip lock bags of a little over a pound each. I took some of the larger ones (even though most were quite large) and marinated them for a couple of hours. Then put them on skewers and grilled them. Here is the finished product. They were delicious.

I would normally say here that this was just another awesome day, but it was not all that awesome. I got word that a good friend that I used to work with, lost his 24 year old son. I can’t imagine what he and his wife are dealing with. I wish my kids and grandkids were here to hug and tell them how much I love them. Life is so precious, enjoy every minute and don’t take a single moment for granted.

Mustang Island State Park

We have been hanging out at Mustang Island State Park since Tuesday, January 20. The first two days were pretty nice, but we knew a storm front was coming in. Thursday and Friday we down in the 40's and very windy. When it gets like that, we just hunker down in the trailer and relax. We really don't view those as bad days, we are very comfortable and we like to be lazy every now and then. Kim usually reads and I play on computers.

On Wednesday, we went to a local birding center and walked on the boardwalk.

We saw a number of birds including the Roseate Spoonbill and some Shoveler ducks. We also saw two large alligators. Not as big as the one at Choke Canyon, but still around 10 feet. I am really not set up to take pictures of birds, so I did not get any good ones. We did see some Nutrias in the grass. They look kind of like a muskrat. 

Kim saw this flower blooming. It sure feels strange to have a flower blooming in January.

Here is a picture of our campsite. I think it is one of the best in the park. You can see all of the water. We must have had more than an inch of rain.  Hopefully that will help the drought  that is going on down in south Texas. 

I also found my first geocache. It was an old ammo can. I downloaded the app the other day and I may do some of that when I am in different parks. We will see. I signed the book and put it back in place.

While the weather was bad, I went shopping. I bought a salt water fishing rod and the gear needed to do some surf fishing. I tried it out on Saturday. I didn't catch anything, but I think I may enjoy this. One of the cool rules with Texas State Parks is that you can fish without a license. I love that about Texas SP's.

I had this Blue Heron hanging around looking for scraps. 

Well that just about catches us up to this weekend. We are looking at moving over to the National Seashore on Tuesday. We will be boondocking, but the campground is closer to the beach and I would like to ride my motorcycle down the beach. We will see if that works out. 

I will leave you with a couple of sunset pictures. The beach area makes for some very nice sunrises and sunsets. 

Have a great day!