Day 11: Mustang Island State Park, Mustang Island, TX. Not all that are lost wander.

Well, the wind blew something fierce last night, but thanks to heat exhaustion we slept pretty well. I’m not complaining about heat. Just how relatively unaccustomed we are to it right now. With the change to DST this morning, I got a relatively late start to the morning walk. I ventured out along the various wings of the campground to explore it. No gators (still) but did see a spoonbill in its pink splendar. I happened upon “Birds with Bill” a volunteer led birding tour for campground visitors. I pretended I belonged for a short period of time but they were fascinated with the cormorants and I wasn’t so off I went.

The morning was beautiful and calm so we sat outside and had breakfast while staring at the ocean (technically bay). Alas, no more dolphin sitings. I wonder if they miss me as much as I miss them? Whilst eating we discussed some next steps and booked a campground. Around noon we disconnected and hit the road.

We liked Goose Island so we booked some more nights there for next weekend. Texas State parks charge a small fee for cancellations, so if we change plans, it does not cost us much. Try doing that at an Ontario Provincial Park!

Oh, showers at Goose Island get a 4 out of 10. Heavily used so they are hard to keep clean but they had hot water.

We headed to the other side of the other side of the park to see the big tree. It is, true to its name, a big tree. Mommy, Daddy, look at me. I went to school and I got the big tree.

After the big tree we headed for Mustang Island State Park, TX. MISP is on Mustang Island which is north(ish) of Padre Island. It was a fairly short drive here that took us through Corpus Cristi. We stopped in a town for some stuff and fuel.

We arrived at MISP and our first impressions were not favourable. This park is effectively a large parking lot. Each site gets a covered picnic table but they place the parking spots next to each other and the picnic tables next to each other. So, you get to know your neighbours. Sometimes i wish I was friendly. In related news, we are between two sites occupied by siblings and their families. For those that don’t “camp”, you never really want to be in that sandwich. It hasn’t been bad yet. In this park, you are best to have a secondary mode of transport. Most people even drive the comfort station which is up to 375 meters from the furthest campsite. Having said a secondary transport would be helpful, there are no bicycle racks anywhere.

After we got settled I walked the 700m to the beach to scope it out. Then walked the 700m back. Beach was busy and wavy, so we decided to go to the beach. We grabbed minimal stuff and walked over to the beach. Mrs Milddogs had a swim as the water is fairly warm. I, having grabbed minimal stuff, forgot to switch into my bathing suit so I just waded in. Water was nice. People here, like some of the beaches in Florida arrive with wagons full of accessories and drag them through the fine sand. I prefer the minimalist approach, but with bathing suit next time! On the way back, I had to carry Amy about three quarters of the way. She was not in the mood to walk back!

For dinner we had some left over pork from the other day laid onto tortillas or nacho chips with guacamole, salsa, queso and tomatoes.

Post dinner we sat outside in the heat and stared at the dunes. We then headed to the beach for a nice sunset walk. It was pretty. Still a lot of people on the beach. When we were at Jamaica beach, there was some plastic waste. It looked like some was local and some washed ashore. We, like other people there, picked up plastic while looking for shells and disposed of it in some of the garbage bins that were every 100 meters or so. Here at MISP beach, there are no garbage cans. They offer free garbage bags. There is plastic waste everywhere. Much of it locally generated. A bit sad. Mrs Milddogs picked up a section of decent rope someone had used to tie down their sun shelter. We got some free rope out of the deal! No, it was not still attached.

Tomorrow? We are scheduled to be here one more night. It’s supposed to cool down a bit and rain possibly. So we may head into Port Aranas for a field trip. My port is Aranas, A-R-A-N-A-S.

Cell coverage has been sketchy here. My phone is cycling between 3 bars of Edge and 4 bars of 5G but is mostly on 1 bar of LTE or 1 bar of 5G. I need to reverse engineer how Telus roaming decides to go with. All that to say, I may have to wait to get all of the pictures uploaded.