Going "Coastal"

Several years ago we joined that over-60 club that migrates to warmer climates every winter.  We’ve been hitting the road each January for the last six years, seeking to avoid Midwest winters and find and explore new destinations.  In true “snowbird” fashion, we’ve spent three winters in Florida and one each in Tucson, Arizona and Orange Beach, Alabama.  But we had never spent the winter along the Texas Gulf Coast, so this year we set out to become “Winter Texans.”  The three-day trip was uneventful (travelling through Dallas on a Saturday afternoon helped) and after a short ferry crossing from Aransas Pass, we arrived in Port Aransas late on a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon.

Sunset on our first night in Port Aransas

We learned a few things very quickly:  Texans are very friendly folks; “Winter Texans” (they aren’t “snowbirds” in Texas) tend to come back year after year because they like the area and the welcoming atmosphere; and the entire area around Corpus Christi is referred to as the “Coastal Bend”.

Port Aransas is located on Mustang Island, one of the longest in the chain of barrier islands off of Corpus Christi.  A 24-hour free ferry, operated by the Texas Department of Transportation, connects the island to the mainland.  The ferry crosses the Gulf Coast Inter-coastal Waterway, which serves as the ship channel into the port of Corpus Christi.  Even though the crossing is less than one-third of a mile, the island has a totally different feel than the mainland.  (Sixteen miles south of the ferry terminal, the John F. Kennedy Causeway connects North Padre Island to the south side of Corpus Christi, so it is also possible to drive to and from Mustang Island.)

The two small ferries that serve Mustang Island. There are five larger
vessels. They transport everything from cars to the largest tractor-trailers.

An empty tanker inbound to the Port of Corpus Christi. Texas (by itself)
is now the third-largest producer of oil in the world, and Corpus Christi
is the third-largest port in the U.S. in terms of tonnage.

Dolphins playing in front of an in-bound empty tanker

Dolphins are visible in the ship channel all the time, often in pairs of two

The three tall towers are semi-submersible oil drilling platforms that are
docked near the ferry terminal for maintenance. The ship tied up in front
of them is delivering blades for land-based wind turbines. 

Unloading wind turbine blades. The port area was full of hundreds of blades
and sections of the towers for the wind turbines. Each of the blades is 120
feet long, and they are transported in racks on the deck of the ship.

A tugboat transiting the ship channel. The land mass that you see behind
her is San Jose Island, another of the barrier islands.

A loaded tanker leaving port. Notice how low she rides compared to the photo
of the empty tanker. The rock wall is the south jetty marking the ship channel.

Roberts Point Park, adjacent to the ferry terminal. You can see 4 of the
larger ferries at the terminal on the opposite side of the ship channel.

We love being around water, and are especially attracted to
marinas. This is the Port Aransas Municipal Boat Harbor.

Cormorants and pelicans sit on the breakwater at the mouth of the
municipal harbor. As boat propellers stir up the fish, the birds fly high
into the air, spot their prey, and dive underwater to catch their lunch.

We booked our stay at Port A RV Resort, a relatively small (in numbers of sites) park that was completely rebuilt after Hurricane Harvey devastated the island two-and-a-half years ago.  Additional reasons that we chose this park include the fact that it sits adjacent to a bird sanctuary, is convenient to the beach, and is close to the majority of the restaurants and shops of Port Aransas. 

Our site at Port A RV Resort. We were in the newest section of the
resort, added during the rebuilding following the 2017 hurricane.

The fishing lake behind our trailer (that's us, with
our bikes still under cover and still on our bike rack.)

Looking across the fishing lake from our site.

This crane visited the lake behind our trailer almost every day,
and would walk up and down the bank. On only a few
occasions did I see him (her?) catch a fish

The pool in the new section of Port A RV Resort. To the left, not visible
in this picture, is a building containing a recreation room/kitchen,
gym, laundry facility and restrooms and showers

The original pool and hot tub. I'm standing in front of another building
housing a recreation room/kitchen, office, mail room, laundry,
and showers and restrooms.

Charlie's Pasture, the wetlands adjacent to Port A RV Resort,
taken from the resort

Port A Resort backs up to Charley’s Pasture, a 1,200 acre wetland that is part of the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail.  Unfortunately, the expansive boardwalk through the nature preserve is still under reconstruction after being destroyed by the 2017 hurricane, but the area is still a lovely backdrop.  It is only a short drive to the Leonabell Turnbull Birding Center, where 700 feet of the boardwalk and one of the viewing towers have been rebuilt.  The Coastal Bend area is the winter home of the endangered Whooping Crane.  With approximately 504 left in the wild, it is a rare treat to see these huge, majestic birds.  Each pair requires approximately 250 acres for their nesting territory.  Another beautiful bird is the Roseate Spoonbill, with its striking pink feathers.  This bird was endangered in the 1800’s, when ladies’ hats sporting feathers were in fashion.  The Snowy Egret was also on the endangered list for the same reason.  Blue Herons are fun to watch as they stalk their prey in shallow water, while pelicans, diving into deep water from as high as sixty feet to catch a meal, make a dramatic splash.  Forty species of ducks and hundreds of varieties of shore birds make this area, located on the Central Flyway, their winter home.

This pair of Whooping Cranes spent the winter at Leonabell
Turnbull Birding Center at Port Aransas.

We saw this big alligator, maybe 12 to 14 feet long, sunning himself almost every
time we went to the Birding Center. He never seemed to bother - or even notice -
the birds. The last time we were there, he was swimming in the water.

The Roseate Spoonbill, like the flamingo, derives its color from its diet,
primarily shrimp. The colors can range from pale pink to bright magenta.

The Leonabell Turnbull Birding Center is owned by the City of
Port Aransas and is home to many species of birds.

By the 1920's, the Roseate Spoonbill population had shrunk
to only a few dozen nesting pairs, and they were put on the
endangered species list in the 1940's.

We THINK this is a Green-winged Teal.  In any case, he is pretty.

Common Moorhen

Spoonbills are found on every continent except Antarctica.  The
genus name, Platelea, comes from Latin, and means "broad,"
referring to the distinctive shape of the bill.

Heron. We love the reflection in the water.

White pelicans typically live in the interior part of North America, and migrate
to the southern coastal areas in winter. They have the second-largest
wingspan of any native bird, second only to the California condor.

One of the things that we were not used to is that it is the norm to drive cars and trucks on the beach. In fact, it is marked on road maps as “Beach Road”.  A $12.00 beach parking tag is good for an entire calendar year.  One sees a significant number of Texas license plates, as visitors from San Antonio, Austin, Houston and all over Texas come to the island for long weekends or vacations.  Out-of-state license plates reflect that many of the Winter Texans come from mid-western states:  North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kansas and Missouri, with a few from east of the Mississippi River – primarily Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.  Canadian visitors tend to hail from Ontario or the Prairie Provinces.  Pickup trucks and golf carts – a very common form of island transportation - often sport American and Texas flags.  Retirees, fishermen, and families with kids and dogs on leashes all share the beach.  People camp, picnic and build bonfires.  Everyone also shares the responsibility of picking up after themselves and respecting the beach environment.  Communities provide free mesh trash bags both for your own trash and to encourage visitors to help clean up the beaches.

The south jetty, looking out onto the ship channel. A lot of people fish here, 
and the pelicans often hang around and wait for fish to be thrown to them.

This pelican is banded for tracking. If you enter his band number
into a database, you can track where he has been seen.

Wading in the shallow waters just inside the south jetty, looking for food.

A pelican takes off after a fish.

Yep, that one's definitely a keeper.

Horace Caldwell Fishing Pier. Signs warn of strong undertows beneath the
pier, but local surfers still find it an exciting place to catch a wave.

Feeding the gulls on the beach. The ships out on the horizon are
anchored and waiting to get into the Port of Corpus Christi.

Distance-markers along the beach serve a variety of purposes, from
helping you get your bearings to assisting first responders in the event
of an emergency. They are 1/10 mile - about one city block - apart.

Camping, both tent and RV, is allowed on the
beach, except in areas posted with this sign.

Diana Vondra, a crochet enthusiast and long-time Winter Texan from Iowa,
made the first 30 caps for the bollards during the summer of 2016

Several of the caps are refreshed each year. They
are put on the bollards each winter, and removed
before the spring breakers and summer tourists arrive.

Despite being a foggy day early in March, spring break families have set up
camp on the beach. The front-loader belongs to the City; he is smoothing
out the sand on the beach "road".

Beach chairs from Cinnamon Shores Beach Vacation Rentals
await guests at the water's edge.

It is spring break, but still cool enough for a morning fire.  He
is wearing a coat, she is wearing a halter top, and their kid
is keeping warm by sitting down in the hole dug for the fire.

Loved this old Chevy pickup and vintage travel trailer.

Flying our kite on the beach.

Seagulls on a foggy morning.

There are plenty of porta-potties and trashcans on the beach,
and everything is surprisingly clean.

Restaurants and bars are very casual and local venues often offer music, from the husband and wife duo named the Browns, playing soft rock and folk tunes on Friday nights at the local coffee shop, Coffee Waves, to the well-organized group of both local and Winter Texan musicians – some fourteen to sixteen in all – who gather each Thursday evening at the clubhouse of Seashell Village Resort to play mostly country and western music.  Many of the local wine shops and bars offer live musical entertainment.

Coffee Waves' Friday night folk music.

Country-and-western musicians in the clubhouse at Seashell Village.  Rather than play as a
group, each performer takes turns playing and singing a song on his or her own. They usually
played for about two hours each week. The picture was taken from a second-floor balcony.

All-you-can-eat shrimp dinner at Kody's every Wednesday evening.

Port A RV Resort sponsored a number of entertainment events while we were there, including painting classes hosted by a couple of professional artists from Kansas City who travel and live in their motorhome; an evening performance of comedy and magic by a man from the Rio Grande Valley who has entertained professionally in Branson and other places; and a one-night concert by The Band Wanted, a husband and wife duo named Joshua and Candy Carpenter, who travel the southwest in an old bus, performing in a variety of locations from saloons to retirement centers to nursing homes.   

One of the things we like to do when we travel is attend community and/or college theater productions.  Within a block of the resort is the Port Aransas Community Theater (PACT), where we enjoyed the comedy “Love, Sex and the I.R.S.” and the romantic mystery-comedy “The 39 Steps”, a take-off of the original Alfred Hitchcock thriller of the same name.  In nearby community theaters we attended “Church Basement Ladies” (the Rialto Theater, Aransas Pass), the musical “Nunsense” (the Aurora Arts Theater, Corpus Christi), and we thoroughly enjoyed the fantastic vocals of Janelle Shetters as Patsy Cline, supported by the wonderful acting of Sandy Brandenstein as Louise Seger in “Always, Patsy Cline” at the Rockport Little Theater in Rockport.  The Warren Theater, on the campus of Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi, was the venue for the comedy “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder”  We appreciated the talent, dedication and hard work of all of the actors, musicians and crews at all of these productions.   

Playbills from all of the productions we saw this winter in the Coastal Bend area

Port Aransas was historically a fishing village which, in recent years, has become a warm-weather winter escape, a spring break gathering-spot, and a summer beach destination.  The island’s historic character is being kept alive by, among other things, a living history museum at the Farley Boatworks, preserving the art of building handcrafted wooden boats.  Farley boats were primarily built for sport fishing, especially tarpon fishing.  President Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed a fishing trip to Port Aransas in May of 1937, with local boat builder Barney Farley as his guide. 

The art of building wooden boats by hand is alive and well at Farley
Boatworks, thanks to a group of volunteers, some of whom are
full-time island residents and some of whom are Winter Texans.

These concrete planters, seen everywhere around Port Aransas, are replicas of the
original Farley boats, and were a project of the Port Aransas Garden Club for
island beautification. Current cost (unpainted) is $525, and includes delivery.

The boat with the mermaid is in Roberts Point Park and was painted by a
woman from Columbia, MO, who is a Winter Texan.  The boat with the
camper belongs to Port A RV Resort and sits at entrance to the resort.

The Tarpon Inn, located at 200 E. Cotter Avenue in Port Aransas, was originally built with surplus lumber from Union Army barracks, and was used as a dormitory for men building the south jetty for the ship channel.  After the jetty was completed, the building was sold and re-opened as an inn in 1886.  During the heyday of tarpon fishing, the inn became a haven for fishermen, and one wall of the main lobby is adorned with over 7000 tarpon scales, each signed by the angler who landed the fish, noting the date and the weight and length of the catch. The most famous scale is the one signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who caught several tarpon during his 1937 fishing trip, even though he did not actually stay at the inn.

Standing in front of a wall of tarpon scales at the Tarpon Inn

Another glimpse into the history of the town can be found at the Port Aransas History Museum, housed in an original Sears, Roebuck and Company “kit house” brought to the island by barge in 1910.  The house was one of the few on the island that withstood a 1919 hurricane, and it was temporarily converted for use as the Coast Guard station when the permanent station was destroyed.

The Sears "kit house"was also known as the Mercer House, having
been built and occupied by the Mercer Family. It has been moved
at least three times in its 110 year history. 

Copies of more than 12,000 photos and documents pertaining to the
history of the City of Port Aransas have been archived in the museum.

Twice each month, the history museum offers guided tours, limited to 10 guests, to the petite (250 square feet) Chapel on the Dunes, the oldest consecrated church on the island.  The chapel was built in 1937-38 by Mrs. Aline Carter, known locally as the “White Angel” for her flowing white organdy dresses and for her service to the community.  Mrs. Carter later was named poet-laureate of Texas from 1947 to 1949.

Mrs. Carter commissioned her friend and noted San Antonio
artist, Ethel Wilson Harris, to design and build the chapel.

In 1972, with the permission of one of Aline Carter's
sons, artist John Patrick Cobb painted the Biblical
murals. Local residents were outraged.

The Tarpon Inn, the Sears “kit house” containing the museum, and the Chapel on the Dunes have all survived numerous hurricanes and continue to tell the story of Port Aransas. 

Since 1851, 64 hurricanes have struck the Texas Gulf Coast, and Port Aransas has certainly had its share of them.  The most recent was Hurricane Harvey, which roared ashore on August 25, 2017 as a Category 4 hurricane and made landfall between Port Aransas and neighboring Rockport.  One of the victims of Harvey was the iconic 1950’s hotel officially named the Aransas Inn, but known locally as the Pink Hotel.  This winter, some two-and-a-half years after the hurricane, it was determined that the hotel could not be salvaged and brought up to current standards, and the decision was made to raze the building.  When we left in mid-March, demolition had not yet started.  Other vestiges of the devastation can still be seen in homes and condos that have not yet been repaired, but are undergoing renovation.  New construction is flourishing.  The residents (along with some long-time Winter Texans) have worked hard to restore and rebuild their community.

While a lot of renovation and rebuilding has been done, there is
still a lot more to be done. This condo complex is right in the
middle of town, near the beach.

Further outside town, this complex remains un-repaired. Locals
told us the number of spring-breakers was nowhere near past
years because of the lack of places to rent.

The Aransas Inn, a.k.a. the Pink Hotel, on Eleventh Street
has been condemned and will be razed. 

Meanwhile, houses like this one at Pamilla Beach Resort and Golf Community
are going up as fast as builders can work. There is no  shortage of work for
building trades-people on the island.

But Port Aransas is, above all else, a vacation community,
and this street scene, on Avenue G, reflects that.

Mardi Gras Parade 2020 in Port Aransas.

From its founding as Ropesville in 1888, to its name change to Tarpon (to celebrate the local sport fishing industry) 8 years later, to the eventual renaming of the town as Port Aransas (when the U.S. Postal Service opened a new post office there in 1910), the little community at the north end of Mustang Island has had a storied history.  When Hurricane Harvey hit, it is estimated that 100% of the businesses and 85% of the residences were damaged or destroyed, yet the resilient town and its residents have rebuilt and moved forward, lending credence to their slogan “Port A Strong”.  We were thrilled to have spent our winter going “coastal” in Texas, and proud to include Port Aransas as one of our “Road Stories”.