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.