Mama Luna

Afternoon all~

My sweetie and have recently received joyous news that we are to be parents

Before this news we were planning our vacation around the Kerville Folk Festival in Texas, as Trevor (the sweetie) has been on the volunteer stage crew for the past 10 years. This will be my first meeting of his Texan Fam! We are road-tripping down in our Zoom Zoom, (leaving this Sunday, May 11th) aching to do some BEACH camping to have some 1 on 1 vacay time before the beautiful madness of the Festival.

I've been researching and researching some more on where to camp on the beach in Padre Island National Seashore, or South Padre Island...these seem to be the best spots - am I wrong? Are we missing a gem...please help us! Were down with 'Primitive Camping', and are fine with pretty much anywhere on the shores of Texas, as we are well hooked up with gear. Toilets would be a bonus and some shaded areas nice too...I'm having trouble finding beach camping (maybe we're watching too much LOST?) that has these things...once again help! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Me vs. Wild

Hi,
Beach camping on the Texas coast is definitely a great experience and I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Mustang Island State Park on Mustang island (just outside Corpus Christi) is accessible, has some amenities (bathrooms, showers, store) and is only a short drive from either Corpus or Port Aransas for supplies, eating out, etc.

Malaquite beach in Padre Island National Seashore is also easily accessible with amenities on site and supplies, restauraunts reasonably nearby.
Both are very nice, but you will have others around you, especially during summertime.

To get away from the crowds, you can travel south onto Padre Island Nat'l Seashore for up to 60 miles. This would be your 'adventure' option. You will be the only camp literally for miles around, however you MUST be well prepared and self sustaining there. First off, a dependable high clearance 4WD vehicle is a must. The driving conditions can range dramatically. It is a natural area and not maintained. There will be debris and unfortunately it is common for trash to wash up along this island. You must carry all of your supplies including extra gas, water, firewood, and self recovery equipment as it is VERY common to get stuck in the sand. There is NO cellular phone service here. There are NO amenities. I'm very familiar with this stretch and can give much more information if you'd like.

South Padre Island is a great place to visit also. The town has a resort feel to it with full amenities and attractions. It is also easy to get away by only a short drive north on the Island. Access to South Padre is via the Port Isabel bridge and you literally have to drive down to that south tip of Texas to get on the island. Wonderful place to visit if you're up for the drive.

For your tent, you'll either need to get 15" stakes, or I'll twist my regular stake sideways in the stakedown loop and bury it about 6" under packed sand. Winds and mosquitos can be a nuisance at any of these places... pack your deet too!

__________________
"All those who wander are not lost."

Troop198

PINS has a good website!

Padre Island National Seashore - Campgrounds (U.S. National Park Service)

honeask

Welcome Me vs Wild, a newcomer with some good info to boot! I want to try some beach camping myself but I still long for that travel trailer that has not (YET) come my way. And congrats to Mama Luna and company with the new addition. Fun is on the way.

Sandy

srds

Congrats on baby and Welcome Moma Luna,PINS is gem and has some great beach camping and if you like fishing is a hot spot for trout right now.We are in Freeport,Tx. and our beaches are nice but don't compare to PINS.Have a great trip and let us know how you did.

srds
Have Fun

__________________
To Camp or Not to Camp -Lets go Camping- Have Fun

Me vs. Wild

Thank you for the welcome Sandy!

When you get your travel trailer, there is an area on PINS (the first 5 miles of beach access) that is maintained for 2wheel drive vehicles and camper access. LOT of northern vacation folks set up their campers here, so it may be fair to assume it's one of the better places to do so. I haven't done it myself, just an observation.

__________________
"All those who wander are not lost."

Adam&Nikhi

We are heading there Friday to Sunday

HillHopper

Have fun. We'll be out there Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

TxAgs92

Hopefully you didn't get hurt too bad by the storm on Sunday afternoon. We had our shade canopy totally thrashed and thrown a half mile down the beach into the gulf, and our tent got turned half inside out by the wind and everything inside was soaked. I would guess the winds were blowing 60+mph and we had pea to dime sized hail falling. We were camped around 14 miles down and ended up bailing out that evening instead of staying until Monday. As we drove out, it looked like very few people stayed south of about 7 mile down to 15 mile, while the area north of 7 mile was still pretty crowded.

HillHopper

Wow... Glad to see you guys made it out okay. The same thing almost happened to our canopy. All I remember is standing way out in the water, and when I turned around to look towards the shoreline, I saw my girlfriend waving bbut it did not click. I stared at her for at least 10 second before I realized she was trying to yell at me and when everything came into focus, all I saw was her clinging onto one leg of the canopy as it started to tumble.

I was not planning on giving into the weather and let it ruin my weekend so I packed up, got a room at Motel 6 ( nice.. they just remodeled and now even has wall mounted flat screens). I was back out there Monday, and went down to the 20-25 marker.

I did enjoy watching the rain come down on the ocean. It felt so peaceful.
The only thing that did ruin my weekend were people dong something that I like to call "ghetto fishing". fishing should be something fun, peaceful. But it seemed everywhere I went, you have people fishing with no licenses and bagging fish that are way undersize.

The worst part of my day was when I went to my fishing spot. There was a guy about 30 yards to my right. As I was putting a live shrimp on my hook, whenthe guy walked over to me and said that I could not cast or fish here because this was "his" area. I asked him what he meant and then realized this one guy had 8 fishing poles casted out at every angle. Not a single one was being paid attention to. He didn't know how to fish... just greedy. What made me more mad, was that the line that he was refferring to near me, no longer had any bait, but he made a big deal that I could not fish there. And everytime I did cast out to where I did not tangle his line, he purposely threw it accross my line to get tangled and I kept getting snagged. If my girlfriend was not there with me, there would have been a good chance that I would have told him my Rick James joke.... "What did the hand say to the face?" SMACK!!!

So... i did the next best thing. I rigged a 4 ounce spider weight, threw it accross all his lines and reeled them in. I gave my pole a good jerk, and his far pole dipped hard. He grabbed his rods thinking fish on. I started reeling in his lines and when all 8 of his lines came up, I cut them....yeah... I did it! You get what you deserved. I would not have gone that far, but when I threw my line out earlier and set my pole and went to my car... this guy had the nerves to look through my stuff ( tackle and live shrimp bucket ). He was getting ready to using my bait. So yea, I cut his line.

Fishing is sport, fish, catch and release.. keep only won't you need to or want. People keep keeping everything and we won't have anymore good fishing left in a few years.

TxAgs92

Wow...sounds like a real jerk. We were lucky enough to end up with about 1/4 mile between us and anybody else in either direction. We had an ovenbird and a Canada Warbler hunting insects under our truck and inside our shade canopy, watched stingrays feeding in the shallows, had coyotes walking around at dusk and just generally had a really nice time right up until the storm hit. We contemplated staying in a hotel sunday night, but had an entire truckbed full of sandy muddy camping gear that we would not have wanted to leave in the truck overnight. Plus, we knew we were going to have a full day's work cleaning and drying out gear when we got home so we dragged the busted shade canopy out of the water and threw it in the dumpster on the way out.

That storm was a mean one. If your girlfriend was able to hold the canopy in place, you must not have caught as bad of a part of it as we did. We had lightning hitting within a mile, blinding rain, 60+mph winds from two different directions during the storm, and pea to dime sized hail falling. With steel poles on the canopy, the last thing I was going to do was stand on the sand trying to hold one upright in a lightning storm.

All we could do was sit in the truck and watch it get taken down. We had it guy roped out pretty well on 4 of the 5 corners to cover the wind directions we had been getting wind from all weekend. The worst winds of the storm turned and came from the direction we only had it staked down on and that was all it took. The tent managed to stay upright, but at one point it was bent over about double, and the wind was blowing a wall of water across the top of the sand and it blew right up the side of the tent under the rain fly and in through the tent windows.

I did very little fishing this trip...just wanted to relax and rest. On sunday afternoon, it looked like jacks and mackerel were working hard outside the third bar straight out from us. Anybody with a kayak would have had some awesome fishing just before the storm got there.

HillHopper

You guys did get hit harder than us. My girlfriend was barely holding onto the leg to prevent it from tumbling any further. It was laying with legs in the air. We bailed out when the wind was only around 15-20mph. The weather was getting worse as I was on my way out.

My new canopy has so much sand in it's poles that when I extend the legs, sand is caked inside and the buttons to lock the top of canopy are stuck. I sprayed down the frame, dried and packed it up but used it again this past weekend to only find more sand. Also, I cleaned all my camping chairs but more sand keeps coming out. Where is all this sand coming from?!!!

The jerk I ran into was near the area of the ferry. I watched him keep every redfish, the biggest looked like they were barely over a foot long.