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| Our view while beach camping. |
If you've been dreaming of camping ON the beach, Padre Island National Seashore is the place for you. Plus it's FREE to camp (you do have to pay a "parking" fee)!
Padre Island National Seashore is on North Padre Island, which is no longer connected to South Padre Island, and is accessible by driving through Corpus Christi Texas. Hot tip... when they say you need a four wheel drive to go past the five mile marker, listen. Also have a shovel and boards to get your four wheel drive and camper unstuck from the very soft sand close to the dunes where they tell you to park. Finally, you don't actually have to be that far off the beaten path, because traffic just goes around you creating a new beaten path.
So, we left rainy Mississippi a day early to head for the sun and surf of the Texan Gulf. The interstates were horrific with litter, traffic, and road construction nearly the entire way. We also found ourselves on a local highway stuck behind a pickup, towing a pickup which was towing a tow dolly and another pickup. Hm. Interesting. We have traveled ALL over this country and have never seen that. It was like they had a bunch of junk to haul and needed three pickups, but had only one driver. I don't know. It was bizarre. But apparently it's a thing here, because not long after, we saw another triple truck tow! And then a run down little car towing a pickup full of junk. I think the Munschs should get a run down little pickup that doesn't run and just tow it behind the suburban when we need to haul stuff. Or two for that matter.
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| The triple threat pickup tow in Texas. |
Well, all the road oddities made travel a little slower than we would have liked (I may or may not have lost my mind and started yelling at cars) and we arrived to the National Seashore with only about an hour before the sun set. This was not ideal as we had no idea what to expect. Even less ideal was the road sign declaring, after driving 20+ minutes onto the island, that there was a boil order on all water from the park and that water should be obtained before coming to the island. This information would have been helpful, oh I don't know, 20 MINUTES AGO! Nevermind, we literally had no time to turn around for water if we wanted to set up for the night. Onward we pushed.
Our next obstacle was where to check in. Did I mention there is absolutely no cell service on the island? There's not. Your phone turns into a very expensive sudoku machine. At least that's what my phone turned into. So, without cell service there was really no way to figure out how to check in. Jason did attempt to pull into the visitors center to check for a self serve kiosk, but with the sun swiftly dropping and my irritation steadily rising, we just headed for the beach. Which was SPECTACULAR!
To be fair, at first it was a little scary because we didn't really know how the sand drove (imagine like a plowed field with snow) and we didn't know how far to go, or how high up the tides came, or anything really. Also, there was also a LOT of trash. Like imagine a lot of trash and then double or triple that amount. So many single shoes and an endless supply of bottle caps. Plus appliances, emergency water bags, a kayak here and there, and miles of rope and crates of all shapes and sizes, dotted the dunes and beach. I found a brand new, with the tag still on, TJ Maxx bag that I considered washing off and using but instead filled with other trash. Jason would not have been down with a beach garbage tote. Most of the trash was some sort of plastic and I seriously questioned what was wrong with us as a society that we could and would allow such a beautiful, precious area to be filled with so much trash. Finally, somewhere just after the five mile marker, we found a slightly less litter filled section of beach and decided to set up. We now had about 20-30 minutes before the sun would set.
Before pulling the camper snug up against the dune, Jason and I got out and walked on the beach to test it's firmness. Everybody knows that the weight of two people walking and jumping around will give you a good idea of how a surface will handle the weight of a Suburban and travel trailer. And so it was deemed firm enough to continue.
Until it wasn't firm enough to continue. Which was relatively quickly. We had literally just passed the sign that said, "towing is very expensive." Well, we were not about to be towed out. I was suddenly very thankful for all the wooden boards that we haul around the country and incredibly glad that Jason had resisted my constant urging to replace them with the fun orange camping levelers. Because fun orange camping levelers would have been totally ineffectual as both shovels and at providing the needed traction to unstuck that truck.
And so the panicked digging began. We knelt low into the sand and chucked sand from beneath the tires with our hands, the boards, and the collapsible little green shovel we had recently added to our collection of camper tools. When we thought we were done, I urged everyone to dig a little deeper so that the boards were touching several inches of each tire's treads. Then we crossed our fingers and Jason gunned it backwards, jackknifing, but freeing the entire rig. It was only then that I realized how humid it was and how much of my skin was covered in fine, powdered sugar like sand. I would say the percent was very near 100. But the camper was free and we could finally set it up.
We pulled forward and much, much closer to the beaten path and dropped the camper. We were hot, exhausted, damp, gritty, and way too hungry. But there we were, camping on the beach.
That night, Jason urged us all to come outside to look at the stars. Had it been any other night, one or more of us wouldn't have come for one reason or another. Thankfully that night, with a new moon, we all obliged. The sky was dark except for the million little twinkle lights dotting every inch. It was surreal. It was then that I took the best picture ever (and also one of the three boys):
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| Our little camper on Padre Island National Seashore. |
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