When we decided to avoid mexico, we found an emergency plan to go to Padre Island. No, not the spring break party zone, but the national seashore. We arrived in the evening, settled down right on the beach and set camp.
We all played in the water and had a great night. The next day, day nine of our trip, we had an easy morning of trash collection on the beach and then joined a formal beach walk with one of the rangers at Padre Island. She told us about how all of the current in the Gulf of Mexico feed more or less straight to Padre Island, which is why one can find so much trash on it. The island's hundred miles of beach gets detritus from all the US states, mexico, the yucatan, and the Caribbean. She told us about the crazy sargasso seaweed that comes neck deep at times from the sargasso sea. We saw ghost crabs and whip coral. We touched a dolphin skull and learned that thirty years ago the island was a total desert. it was a cattle ranch, and the cows had eaten everything on the island.
To me, the best part of being on padre came at night, when i found star phosphorescence in the water. It is caused by single celled organisms, armored flagellates, that activate like fireflies when the water is churned. we all played in the water and splashed about, sparking green stars into the night. it was pretty amazing.
We woke on Tessa's birthday and made pancakes out of brownie mix, piled a million pounds of sand into our van and took off. We had a cleaning frenzy at the visitor station, sweeping and dusting and washing ourselves and our belongings. Now we are on the road to Austin, where we will be doing some service work and learning more about Mexico.
Jason S
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