Beaches, Sand, Shells & Wind - Farewell to South Padre Island

We can't believe that we've been here 3 months and are busy packing up to leave on Tuesday.  We've had the carpets cleaned and the wash and wax happens tomorrow morning.  We'll be hitched and packed by tomorrow night and leave early on Tuesday morning to head to Houston.

I wanted to share some photos and videos from the past couple of weeks here on the island.

We have been going to the end of the road on the north end of the island and walking along the deserted beach to pick up seashells and enjoy the peace and quiet.

Beautiful wind swept sandy beaches

No one around - So quiet and beautiful

The shells were great - We found some as large as our hands - I ended up with a large ziploc bag that weighed about 20 pounds that I carried back from our walk.

 Since we are coming so near to the end of our trip here, Matt has been kiteboarding as much as he can in our final days.  I went with him down to the kiting beach on the Laguna Madre side of the island and waded out into the flats with him to take some photos and videos of him horsing around.

Inflatible Pool Toy - Check; Wetsuit - Check; Sunscreen - Check; Big Grin - PRICELESS!!!  Matt getting ready to go kiteboarding today. 

As I was in the water with Matt, I had an opportunity to take some photos from some angles that I normally can't get.  Here he was just getting ready to go back out.

Foot in and ready to power up

Matt, surfboard and the 9meter Cabrina kite

We stopped for dinner on our way home from the kite beach and enjoyed a great margarita and fajitas at Padreritaville.  The waiter was nice enough to snap this photo of us.

And now for some funny videos.  As I mentioned, I was in the water with the camera and as you will see in one of the video's, Matt gets quite close at times.  If you receive this in an email, be sure to go to the BLOG (CLICK HERE) so that you can view the video.

It was pretty light wind today, so there was a lot of clowning around to ward off boredom.  Here, Matt used his surfboard as a very small boat as he skipped across the water.  Not quite the normal methods of riding a surfboard.

In this video, Matt takes a nice little ride, that ends with my favorite...  A BIG SPLASH...

 

Here Matt gets a little close for comfort to me as I'm filming - Notice the scream and the camera bobble...

Here is a nice little ride, showing off how its done!!!

I think that is all for now.  I'll update once we are on the road and we have some more photos to share.  I've updated the sidebar here on the blog to show our travel itinerary for the next month, so visit the blog if you are wondering where we are (if you get this in email form).

Happy Travels,
Angela

Shake Rattle & Roll

We had another very windy day yesterday and an even windier night last night.  Needless to say, not much sleep with the trailer rocking and rolling all night long.  Below is the wind chart showing the wind speeds here on the island.  I think we hit the beach about 9am and Matt didn't get home until after 3pm. 

See where the numbers spike through the roof...  we were trying to BBQ outdoors at that point...  Nothing like sand flavored steaks...

We had planned on grilling some steaks on our little outdoor grill and thought we could sneak it in before the cold front hit...  Well, we miscalculated and the 40+ mph gusts actually pinned the trailer door shut on us and we were afraid we would not be able to get outside. It is amazing when the front lines hit down here, the wind goes from nothing to blowing unbelievable gusts.  Usually no rain or anything, just wind, wind & more wind.

Matt enjoyed some great kiteboarding both in the surf and in the flats.  I took my camera down to our beach here at Isla Blanca and took some photos of him enjoying the waves in the morning.

Now that is a BIG grin...

The beach of South Padre Island in the background

Matt and his inflatable pool toys - This is his new 9 meter kite

Jump Baby Jump....  I think I'd jump over those waves too...  Yikes!!!

We survived...

Well, we survived the Texas Week spring break or as the locals call it "Hell Week" here on the island.  It was quite busy and we are very happy to have our sleepy little island back.  We've been hanging out and enjoying the wonderful warm weather although it is starting to border on being Hot as we have had temperatures in the 80's for the past week (but NOT complaining).

We are here for another 2 1/2 weeks and then we will head to Houston for a brief stopover for a friends wedding before beginning our trek east and heading up the east coast this summer.  We've put together an itinerary for April and May that gets us to Hatteras, NC where we will hang out for about 3 weeks for Matt to try out the kiteboarding there. 

Here is a map of our proposed route:

Here are our proposed sightseeing activities in each of our stopovers, if anyone has any other ideas, please let us know.

City	State	Things to Do / See	Stay (Days)	Start Date	End Date
South Padre Island	TX		90	01/19/11	04/19/11
Houston	TX		5	04/19/11	04/24/11
New Orleans	LA	French Quarter, Café du Monde, French Market, St Louis Cathedral, Cemetary 1 & 2 (tour), Hermann-Grima Historic House, Bourbon Street, Steamboat Natchez, St. Charles Ave Streetcar (Anne Rice's house on 1st St), One Eyed Jacks (bands), Croissant D'Or (pastries),  - Outside Plantation Alley, Bayou Teche Longfellow Evangeline State Historic Site & McIhenny Tabasco Co,	4	04/24/11	04/28/11
Natchez	MS	House on Ellicotts Hill, Stanton Hall, Longwood, Rosalie, Melrose Plantation	2	04/28/11	04/30/11
Vicksburg	MS	Vicksburg National Military Park,	2	04/30/11	05/02/11
Montgomery	AL	First White House of the Confederacy, F Scott Fitzgerald house museum,	2	05/02/11	05/04/11
Atlanta	GA	Margaret Mitchell House & Museum, Atlanta History Center, World of CocaCola,	3	05/04/11	05/07/11
Ashville	NC	Biltmore Estate	2	05/07/11	05/09/11
Winston-Salem	NC	Old Salem, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts	1	05/09/11	05/10/11
Hatteras	NC	Wright Brothers National Memorial,  Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, Oracoke village	19	05/10/11	05/29/11

IT'S SPRING BREAK... CAN YOU BELIEVE IT????

Well, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard "IT'S SPRING BREAK...  CAN YOU BELIEVE IT????" screamed on the beach in the last couple of weeks, well, lets just say that I'd never have to work again... And of course its always in some very high pitched female voice (For those who watch How I Met Your Mother, there are lots of "woo" girls down here).

Actually spring break down here has not been too bad yet although we are being told that today is normally the worst day of the week as lots of local town kids descend on the island as well.  We also have the Snoop concert right next to us tonight so we'll see if we get any sleep.  We have still be venturing out to the kiting beach and even the grocery store yesterday, and while things are much busier than normal, it is manageable. 

Not too much going on for us here.  Matt has been kiting and I've been working on some scrapbooking pages and getting things ready for the classes that I'll be teaching at the Bald Eagle Festival in November.  We did get to watch another turtle release a couple weeks ago, I'll get some photos posted up later. 

I've started a new blog http://shetzersdesigns.blogspot.com to keep my scrapbooking stuff a little separate from our person blog so instead of posting the posts twice, I'll just post some links here and you can check it out if you wish.

Here are a couple of links here of some new scrapbook pages that I've done.

OVER THE MOUNTAINS AND THROUGH THE WOODS

SS Graveyard

Born To Be Wild

EAGLE EYE

WHITE TIPS

Merry Christmas to Us!!!

We are loving being Winter Texans this week.  It has been sunny with high temperatures in the 70's and lows in the 60's, just beautiful and windy enough for Matt to kite quite a bit.

I realized that I had not posted a photo of our campsite yet, so I grabbed one this afternoon.  Its nothing special but is roomy enough for us to spread out and for Pinkie to enjoy the sun.  We do actually have a ocean view from our large back window even though we are one row away from being beach side.  We do have to use our big tarp on the ground here because the grass is filled with these horrible little mean sand burrs.  Needless to say our first few days were filled with several "choice" words as we picked them out of our tender little feet.  No going barefoot around here.  Notice how clean and shiny the RV is, we had her washed and waxed last week and they did a wonderful job of removing my bees and also of removing the Alaskan and Canadian road grime accumulated over the past year.

Isn't she pretty & shiny???

We've spent most of the week on the beach and I caught Matt enjoying a Coke and good book.  I have finally finished reading all 7 of the Harry Potter books and I loved them.  Thank you Mom and Dad for the wonderful Christmas presents!!   

Beach Babe!!!

We have been asked quite a few times if there is anything major that we forgot to bring with us on our journey and for the most part, there has been nothing critical.  However, we did miss our expresso and latte maker terribly.  So, on our recent trip to Corpus Christi, we decided that a visit to Bed, Bath and Beyond was in order so that we could get a small expresso machine for the trailer.  We have really enjoyed our lattes (and am actually enjoying one as I post this).

Yum!!!!  But I just finished drinking this one!!!

We always struggle with what to buy each other for Christmas so this year we decided to wait and see what came up that we wanted after Christmas.  After being in Haines for so long, we were so far out of touch with stores and shopping that we really had no idea what we wanted.  Well, we both got to say Merry Christmas these past two weeks.  Matt decided that a new kiteboard was needed and I decided that I wanted a large format scanner so that I could scan my scrapbook pages into my computer.  Merry Christmas to us, Merry Christmas to us...  For our family that gave us money for Christmas and contributed to our "Christmas Fund", THANK YOU and see below for our gifts...

He says it goes "upwind" much better than his old one.

Busy at work scanning away

 I have spent the last 2 days playing with my present and have all my images scanned in for 2010 and some of 2007 that I had with me.  I will send the heavy original paper copies home in a large box with Ted when he comes to visit us next month for safekeeping.  I also started a new website for all my scrapbook pages.  As I get it updated, I'll post the link here so you can check out my pages.

I think that is about all that is going on with beach life so I'll catch you up in about another week. 

Take Care,
Angela

Winter Texans...

Well, I think we are officially "Winter Texans" although even we have not escaped these wonderful winter storms that have been plaguing us all.  Its been a while since I've posted so lets see if I can get us caught up.

At the end of January, we drove to visit our friends Jim & Sandie who are in McAllen, Texas and will be joining us here on SPI in March.  The area is much larger than we anticipated and it is estimated that the normal 100,000 population swells to over 300,000 due to Winter Texans.  So what exactly are Winter Texans, not quite sure, but we all seem to be hiding from winter in Texas so you can draw your own conclusions.

Matt has had several really good days of kiting and even some extremely windy days before the first winter storm in the first few days of February.  We had winds 30+ and temperatures in the 30's and spent about 18 hours without power.  Now normally, that is not an issue for us, but of course, when we needed it, the generator would not start!!  We did manage to have a wonderful ice storm that left us with several inches of ice all over everything. 

The truck was encased in ice.

The trailer with its ice sheets.  All morning and afternoon we cringed inside as huge ice sheets fell off.  We were a bit scared to walk anywhere near it.  Notice the open generator compartment where Matt was trying to fix it.

We did manage to warm up back into the 70's before this week's storm hit.  We visited the Kite Festival here on the island and the size of the kites were amazing.

That is a huge flying octopus!!!

Quite the variety of kites.

We decided to bypass the RV during this storm and drove about 3 hours north of here to Corpus Christi, Texas.  We hit the cold front about an hour north of here and were hit by 40+ mph winds and a drop in temperature from 67 to 33 in a few very short minutes.  We took advantage of several scrapbook and guitar stores while in Corpus on our first day.  While in Corpus, we visited the Texas State Aquarium.  It is a great facility and we enjoyed the great exhibits although we scurried through the outside exhibits due to the cold.

Here I am enjoying my favorite exhibit, the Sea Horses.

Matt enjoys his favorite exhibit with some very large fish and sharks swimming around.

Since it was so chilly outside, we watched the dolphin show from a showroom that gave us a view inside the tank.

After visiting the aquarium, we drove around Corpus Christi bay and visited the Padre Island National Seashore.  It is amazing to me that the Padre Islands (North and South) make up about a 150 mile long barrier island to the Texas coast.  After a great shrimp dinner at Snoopys, we drove back to our hotel for the night.

Yesterday was our last day in Corpus and we visited the USS Lexington, an aircraft carrier now located in the bay. It was an amazing tour with over 100,000 square of touring area with lots of steep stairs to climb up and down.

The USS Lexington where she now rests in the Corpus Christi bay.

The tower of the ship which includes the bridge and captains quarters.

Can you imagine landing fighter planes on this small little strip with a boat pitching and rolling beneath you.

Matt enjoying one of the exhibits.

Can you imagine sleeping in these quarters?  The sailors didn't just imagine it, they lived it.

The Emergency room on board the ship.

This is actually the sick bay in the hospital area.  Can you imagine being sick and having to climb into one of the top bunks?

Well, I think that just about catches us up.  We returned to SPI yesterday and the weather is gradually improving.  We should be in the 70's this week again, thank goodness....