We spent a beautiful day at the beach, on Padre Island National Seashore yesterday. It was just perfect in my opinion, 70 degrees and sunny, but could have been a little warmer for Sherry. The water was chilly, in the low 60’s according to some fishing reports, so we only went in up to our knees. There was also a strong riptide warning, so swimming was out of the question anyway.

Padre Island National Seashore is a national park. It is the longest undeveloped barrier island in the world. Since we plan to visit a lot of national parks, we bought a national park annual pass so we can get into all the National Parks for free.

Prescribed burn

Away from the beaches, the island is mostly sand dunes and grasslands. The day we were there, 1/29/2020 they were doing a prescribed burn. Before we were allowed to drive down the island, we had to wait for an escort vehicle so we didn’t drive into a smoke/fire danger.

The prescribed burn is a controlled burn set by officials to burn off weeds so the grasses will grow back stronger. It is all black now, but in just a few weeks, it will be lush and green.

In Texas, you can drive on the beaches. The beaches were not crowded at all. We entered at the south end of the north beach and drove north for a few hundred yards and found a nice place to park.

We ate our lunch and then took the dogs for a walk, probably about 1 mile up and down the beach.

Fishing

Of course, I stopped to talk to a couple of fishermen. Two of them had caught a white trout and one had a pompano.

On the way back to the truck, I picked up trash. By the time we got back, both of our hands were full. I found a 5-gallon container and by the time we got back to the truck, it was full and getting heavy.

Most of the trash was small stuff that had washed up; styrofoam, mylar balloons, and plastic bottles were the most common types of trash. However, there was one piece of about 4″ diameter 50′ rope that I drove up to pick up.

We were surprised there were no trash containers on the beach. But then we went to the next section of the beach and there were trash cans about every couple hundred yards.

Padre Island National Sea Shore is a beautiful location everyone should visit at least one time in their life.

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