Back to the beach

Packed up the family and went to the beach over the weekend. We'd planned on going to Port Aransas' Sandfest back in April, but illness intervened. Other planned beach excursions fell apart due to bad weather, sickness and other things that cropped up to disrupt our plans. With all the thunderstorms and river flooding hitting central Texas these past few weeks, we weren't sure if we would make it work this time, either, but with forecasts calling for only 30 percent chance of t-storms on the coast, we figured we'd take our chances and set out Saturday morning.

The two-and-a-half hour drive went surprisingly smoothly, giving us reason to hope the big road trip to St. Louis for NASFiC next month won't be as challenging as we've been fearing. Not easy, mind you, but not so bad.

So we arrive in Port Aransas and stop into one of those beachcomber souvenir shops before we head to the beach, and overhear several customers complaining about how bad the seaweed is on the beach. No biggie. We've been to the beach many times when the Sargassum weed was thick on the shore. Only we quickly discovered that this wasn't the case. Instead of the expected mounds of Sargassum weed, we instead found... mulch? Black material of plant origin, each piece half an inch in length or smaller, formed a thick mat along the shore. The sea was thick with it, more washing up continuously. Jumping past it into the surf resulted in a body getting covered in the crumbly bits. It was gross. It looked for all the world like... oh, joy. Flood debris. There'd been no flooding on the island or heavy storms recently, but all the flooded rivers in the state had been dumping their debris-filled, flood-swollen contents into the Gulf for weeks. The ground-up branches, leaves and other assorted mess was now washing up on the shore, and will likely continue to do so for weeks to come. Throwing in the towel, we packed up after only 30 minutes and drove to the hotel in Corpus Christi where we hit the pool instead.

Side note: All Days Inns are not created equal. The one on the Corpus Christi bay front has somewhat reasonable rates, but the rooms are pretty trashy and the beds are the single most uncomfortable torture devices I've ever had the misfortune of sleeping on. Lisa will back me up on this last count.

That evening, after a surprisingly good meal at Blackbeard's (although the calamari was oddly cut into strips, which makes me wonder if it was fake) we walked out to the Corpus Christi beach. The beach is an artificial on, since it's on the bay, and generally mediocre with lots of crushed shells and little in the way of good beach sand. But it was heaven in comparison to Port Aransas from earlier. Because it's in a sheltered bay, none of the flood debris had made it to the beach. Yay! The kids played along the shoreline, and Lisa took lots of good pictures as the sun went down. We decided we'd hit the beach first thing in the morning before checking out of the hotel, since it's only a block's walk away.

The next morning we hit the beach. And found jellyfish. Big, fat ones, larger than a dinner plate were washed up on the shore every 10 feet or so. And smaller ones, the size of a silver dollar, were washed up every 10 inches or so. I tried clearing off a section of the beach for the kids to play in the water without worrying about stepping on the jellyfish, but the ones I scooped up and buried were replaced immediately--looking closer, the water was full of them. sigh Back to the pool once more. Only the pool was closed for cleaning. Double sigh

Abandoning any thoughts of swimming, we packed up and checked out. We decided, finally, to visit the aircraft carrier Lexington docked at the south end of the beach as a floating museum, since we've talked about going for years but never have. Let me just say that thing is huge. No matter how large you imagine it, it's bigger. We'd figured about two hours for the visit, and ended up spending five. Everyone was footsore and exhausted after hiking around the Lex, clambering up through the bridge, running around the flight deck, going through the engine rooms, mess, berths... It really is a floating city. Despite the amount of time we spent there, we still had to skim most of the displays and information. A person could spend several days exploring only those portions of the ship open to the public and still not take everything in. It also reinforced my conviction that set designers for SF spacecraft in movies need to study naval vessels more closely--there is very little wasted space on even a massive ship like the Lexington. With few exceptions, "cramped" is the operative word. Space is a luxury, and the ship is utilitarian.

A late lunch at the bay front Whataburger perked everyone up, although we were still bushed. The drive home was uneventful. Maybe we'll try for the beach again in September--provided, of course, there hasn't been any recent inland flooding to foul the beaches.

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