Padre Island National Seashore

North Padre Island National Seashore is a protected stretch of 70 miles of beach. There is one paved developed campground and places where you can drive on the sand and camp. We, of course, opted for the developed campground, Malaquite, because we didn’t want to dig this big rig out of sand. We are staying here a week and loving it. We have done walks on the beach each day, biked to the campground on the bay side (which is not as nice, sorry Guy Gibson), and today we are going into Port Aransas and Mustang Island.

The campers here are pretty much winter residents. They stay for 14 days then the rules say you have to leave for 48 hours. They go out for the 2 days and return for another 14 days and do that all winter until they have used up their 56 day limit/year. There are campers that have been coming here for 20 years.

This is also a big shore fishing area. We have watched fishermen set up their long poles and fish off the shore of the campground. One guy with Dean’s help caught a 35 lb stingray yesterday only to loose it when the anchor it was tied to came loose in the sand. They say stingray is like eating scallops.