Memorial Day Weekend at Padre Island

Justin has been wanting to go camping on the beach for years now, so we loaded up the truck this past weekend & headed that way! We are only 4 hours from Padre Island, so the trip was pretty quick & painless... and before long, we had our toes in the sand & were excited for our new adventure!

We visited the Padre Island National Seashore just past Corpus Christi, Texas. This seashore boasts having the longest undeveloped stretch of barrier island in the world, with over 70 miles of sandy beaches -- many of which you can drive on! After entering the beach, we drove 12 miles down the beach to get to our campsite, but there were plenty more miles to be driven!

We wasted no time in getting our swimsuits on & enjoying the beautiful Saturday that we arrived there on!

This is a look up from the beach toward our campsite -- we set up our canopy & chairs mid-way up the beach, then tucked our tent up close to the dunes in the background.

We camped right in front of a huge ocean sand bar, so it seemed like we could walk forever out into the ocean... and could still touch! Austin really enjoyed this, as you can tell....

We were totally amazed at all of the small sea clams that were buried in the sand at the shoreline. We could dig our hands or feet into the sand & hundreds of these small donax clams would emerge. They were all colors of the rainbow & were totally amazing -- I've never seen anything like it, at least not in this scale!!

Some of the other fun "beach wildlife" that we saw were these super cute little sand crabs. These things are FAST! I ran around chasing a few like a crazy Mommy so I could get one in a bucket to show the kids. This one stopped to pose for a picture, then scurried off like a shot!

And here is a crab that I caught in the water on the shore. We had it in a bucket for a while until Austin decided it was time to set it free.

Let me say one thing about our trip to Padre -- it was WINDY! The wind never stopped blowing! Which was a good thing when it was 100 degrees out & the sun was beating down, but it wasn't so great 100% of the time...

Case in point... Saturday night, we grilled hot dogs & sausages, but the wind blew sand on our food, so they ended up being a bit gritty. That night, we got into our tent to realize that sand had blown through the tent windows and had covered all of our air mattresses, blankets, clean clothes, etc. Ugh... what a downer!

Justin had the alarm set the next morning for 5:30 -- he had heard early morning fishing in the surf was the best. Well... I had fully expected for the alarm to wake us all up, but apparently, that was Kaylee's job on this trip. At 5am, she woke up & announced she was "Done!" sleeping. I tried everything but couldn't get her back asleep. So, after Justin headed out to fish at 5:30, I corralled the kids for another 30 minutes until we finally hit the beach again at 6am. EARLY MORNING for this Mamma!

But, leave it to Kaylee to realize (after the fact, of course) that she had gotten up too early, so she settled down in my lap for a nap at the early-morning time of 8am (heck - she's still sleeping at 8am here at home!!). She napped for about 1 1/2 hours, then we got up for some breakfast. (Egg & bacon breakfast tacos... which had so much sand in them that I couldn't make myself eat any more than 2 bites. It was trail mix for breakfast for me!!)

Sunday was RELAXING!!! Justin & I pulled our chairs onto the beach where the waves would tickle our toes, and we sat there watching the kids play for HOURS. We all had such a great time!!

Justin finally had some good luck in the early afternoon when it came to fishing. I think he caught 4-5 fish & was pretty happy about it...

We loaded everything up & cut our camping trip 1 day short -- I couldn't handle the sand blowing any more, and I certainly wasn't going to sleep in the tent again with the buckets of sand that had poured in. (And it wasn't regular sand, it was the most fine, microscopic sand I'd ever seen... and it stuck to EVERYTHING!) We ended up leaving the beach around 5:30 & headed home to Round Rock. It took most of the day Monday to get everything unloaded, cleaned up, washed down, etc. from our trip -- and I fear that sand will ALWAYS be in our new tent, which is a downer.

BUT, we had a great time & have already talked about heading back to Padre again this summer... but we'll sleep in a hotel & just enjoy the sand during the day!!