I absolutely love that beautiful park! And by the way, those are Queen butterflies, not Monarchs. ;)
This is a wonderful area. And Snoopy's is on our list every time we go to South Texas. The pelicans sail by. My grandparents ate crabs and oysters from these bays.
As one commenter said, industry there is on the run. My mother's place is over in a little town where Exxon and the Saudi family is putting in "the world's largest steam cracker" some sort of plastics plant. It will change everything for a handful of permanent jobs and lots of temp jobs.
Enjoy these beautiful places while you can.
As one commenter said, industry there is on the run. My mother's place is over in a little town where Exxon and the Saudi family is putting in "the world's largest steam cracker" some sort of plastics plant. It will change everything for a handful of permanent jobs and lots of temp jobs.
Enjoy these beautiful places while you can.
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Having had the pleasure of spending the summer in Kingsville, the photos are beautiful and yep there is some darn good food in South Texas, but one should never forget that between April and October, the temperatures in that neck of the woods are screaming hot with Amazonian style humidity. And when I say hot, I don't mean like Miami in the summer, I mean more like Dubai.
Enjoyed this article. Reminded me of a Thanksgiving trip to Mustang Island. The beach there was quiet and peaceful at that time of year.
Good memories - we used to visit with our cousins who lived in Corpus. Day trips, also camping, sleeping out on cots. Built fires from driftwood and did hot dogs, marshmallows, etc. Swimming, body-surfing, fishing, playing in the dunes. Have been to many beaches worldwide since, but that long, largely uninhabited barrier island is my idea of a real beach.
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Big oil has really put it to the Texas Gulf Coast. And with the GOP controlling it just gets worse.
The description of the trash makes me so sad!!!!
Still remember my first visit to SPI beach almost 2 decades ago. I flew in early June (for a job interview) from the frigid shores of Lake Erie. You never wade into the waters of Lake Erie. But this (SPI) was the most rejuvenating warm waters that I had ever experienced in North America. Fast Forward... Still here in South Texas. mainly for the weather!
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My wife's grandfather owned some of that sand on South Padre Island back in the twenties. He traded it (worthless piles of sand) for 66 acres of farmland near Brownsville to grow grapefruit. It didn't work out too well. The family has been leasing out the land for the past 60 years or so to a Mexican-American family.
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My family used to drive there from Albuquerque via Brownsville on the south end nearly 50 years ago. We'd spend a week camping on the beach. I never saw such a wonderful stretch of beach until I saw Canoa Quebrada in Ceara, Brazil.
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Sounds beautiful. My recollection of my stay 20 years ago was the introduction to a product called tar off. The sand and water contained oil bits that stained my body and clothes and the tar off was provided by the hotel in one use packets. The dunes and the rented dune buggy were great though.
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Reared on the Texas Gulf Coast, I attest to beach tar appearing only after offshore drilling started (1970s?). Fish started tasting different too.
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My folks were from Galveston, and there was tar on the beaches from the 40’s, if not earlier. Probably from the tankers and other ship traffic.
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the author never reached little shell which doesn't even start til about mile marker 18 and isn't even fully developed until about mile 25. Missed the best part of the park.
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