Day 14 Texas Vacation Xmas 2011

We were awake by 7am and had a quick breakfast, then we finished packing the car.  We were on the road by 8am.



We drove over the Causeway to the mainland.



But after about 10 miles on our way, I remembered that I did not leave the key to the Airstream and that it was still on my key ring, so we got turned around and drove back to the KOA.

Now that the key is handed in, we can resume our drive.  

We drove through the town of San Benito Texas.  According to the water tower this is the hometown of Freddy Fender.



Similar to the drive South, as we were heading North, we saw many birds of prey sitting on the hydro poles.

  

Near Sarita Texas, our drive slowed to a crawl because the Border Patrol Check Point was open and all drivers were being stopped and questioned.  Since we weren’t smuggling anyone or anything, we were soon on our way again.

  

We are heading North on US-77, here are some of the interesting sights we saw along the way.

  

We exited US-77 and headed East on Texas 358 towards Corpus Christi Texas.  We are going to the North end of Padre Island to visit the Padre Island National Seashore for a couple of hours.

This is the John F Kennedy Memorial Causeway that takes us from the mainland across to the Island.

  

This is the entrance sign to the Padre Island National Seashore.



We paid our entrance fee and entered the park.

  

There isn’t really much to see or do here, at least not at this time of the year.  We stopped at the visitor center and got our National Parks Passport Book stamped and bought some postcards.  They did have a hat pin for my collection and we also bought a couple of t-shirts.



We walked along the beach.

  

The only birds we saw were these seagulls.



I was expecting there to be a birding center here similar to the one on South Padre Island, but there is no such thing.  The land and sand dunes are set aside and protected by the National Park Service, because these beaches are the nesting grounds of the Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtles but the turtles are only here in May when they come ashore to lay their eggs.  So if you want to see and learn about birds you can bypass this and go straight to the Birding and Nature Center on SPI.

After our visit to the National Seashore, we drove North on US-181 past the Aircraft Carrier USS Lexington.  The Carrier is on permanent display here in Corpus Christi.   The next time we are in this area we will spend some time in Corpus Christi and visit the USS Lexington.

 

We checked into the Best Western in Gonzales Texas.  We ordered pizza for dinner and got to bed early because we have a 600 mile / 1000 km day ahead of us tomorrow.

To see all of our photos from today you can click on the link to our FLICKR site.