We’ve now arrived in what is probably the most well known part of Padre Island, Port Aransas. 🙂 The Horace Caldwell pier is on the public beach and a place I have visited many times before. The piers are not expensive to gain access to and worth the admission price to walk down to the end, see what other people are catching and get a different look at the town.

The lady at the gate said I should hang around until the cute fishermen came out at 6 o’clock but I’ve always been a little more partial to surfers.

This is Texas and we may not get the huge waves other places get but that doesn’t mean we won’t get out and catch a wave or two. It’s kind of hard to see but this young dude gave me a shaka when he saw mean snapping shots.

This kid was actually pretty good and you could tell he was having a blast.

I like the way the sun reflected off the water in this next shot, I was out there late in the afternoon and the sun was getting closer to the bay.

As soon as I saw this guy I thought Pau Hana because if I lived here it is definitely what I would be doing after work.

I couldn’t help myself I had to take a picture under the pier before I went to play in the water.

My time on the coast had come to an end and it was time to go, I was leaving a different way than I came in and that was through the ferry, as a child I loved to get out of the car and look at the most traveled entrance to the bay; sometimes you could see big oil tankers coming and going, sometimes there are dolphins at play.

This is how you know you got a good spot on the ferry and are likely to be one of the first ones off and on your way to Aransas Pass which begins the journey home.

These are but a few of the beaches in Texas and I very much encourage you to visit as many of them as you can but please, always remember to respect the locals as they maintain them and please pick up after yourself so that we leave them pristine and beautiful for others.

Today we are under a level two heat advisory which means we are encouraged to get to or stay in an air-conditioned facility, so in order to stay cool I thought we’d head north on the Texas Gulf coast. I headed up 361 and out to JP Luby Surf park, since the waves were small there was… well, no one there but this dude was hanging out trying to catch some lunch.

It really was a gorgeous day and the water did feel awesome but as you can see there were no waves to be caught.

Every once in a while I’ll throw in a self-portrait but because nothing I do is ordinary even these are a little off kilter, so yeah, this is me. 🙂

I then headed further north to Mustang Island State Park and was hanging out between the jetties when I found a little friend. Can you see my little buddy? He’s a little above the center of the shot.

Ok, well, in case you didn’t find him … this is a close up of my friend. I’ve been catching these guys since I was a kid and when you chase them you tend to look like a fool running all over the beach looking down at the sand. I have always called them Sand Crabs but I think their proper name is Ghost Crabs because they are so hard to see on the sand. They get much bigger and tend to be nocturnal but will sometimes venture out during the day. Every time I look at this I think this poor little dude is probably thinking, “Please put me down lady!”

Another bird, this guy wasn’t fishing as much as he was strutting around trying to look cool but I’ll give him props for owning his style.

Of course I had to climb up on to the jetties and this is my view looking out from them.

From the left I was looking over to the right at what was at one time the mouth of Fish Pass; however, over time this water way has dried up and no longer continues from bay to beach so Fish Pass can now only be found bay side but the jetties are still here. You get some pretty cool wave breaks between them but it is rather narrow and the beach here has more broken shells than elsewhere as they are crushed against the rocks.

I walked out almost to the end of the right jetty and as you can see it was a really quite day, there were few fisher folk or water people out; the gulf itself was very quiet on this day too.

So I say goodbye to the state park and headed north so I hope you’ll join me next time as we hit up the other edge of the island.

So as promised we are headed out to Padre Island which is the barrier island for Corpus Christi Bay. I decided to be able capture as much of the island as I could I would head in from the south and drive north, so I jumped on South Padre Island Drive and cruised over the John F Kennedy Memorial Causeway to get to Padre Island. By the way, I did not take pictures of it but under the Causeway on the island side there is an excellent restaurant called Snoopy’s that I have been eating at for years; it is a great place to sit outside, grab a burger and enjoy yourself. Once I crossed the causeway I headed south on SPID and went out to the Bob Hall Pier…

a place I came many times with my father when I was younger, I can remember countless hours on this pier looking out into the distance…

and fishing. There is nothing more relaxing than being out here for hours on end with the roar of the wind in your ears.

As with everything I have to crawl all over the place to get a different view but I learned how neat the bottom side of piers looked while hiding from the sun.

It was late morning on the beautiful Texas gulf coast, I could sit on the beach and stare out at the water forever but I do think the view would be a bit better if the drilling platforms were not out in the distance.

It was also way out there that you could see the coming rain, it is so awesome to watch rain approaching from so far away, to be able to see it falling in the distance while still sitting in the sunshine.

So I jumped in the car and headed north to the mouth of the Packery Channel which is bordered on both sides by jetties, as you can see there are some people kayaking just past the jetties.

As I was walking back along the jetties to continue my voyage I saw something I have seen more of in Hawaii than in the Texas gulf a Honu or sea turtle, there were actually two and they seemed to be be dancing but I only got a good shot of the one.

The jetties are created by huge granite blocks which have been placed on either side; besides being a serene place to sit and listen to the water; it is an awesome place to observe the small sea life that teams around them. One just has to be careful as sometimes they are slippery and you can windup in the water a great deal faster than you thought. 😉

Soon we will head north and explore more of the island to escape the heat in the heart of Texas, the heat index was 110 degrees today so I hope the pictures of the coast made you feel at least a little cooler.