Isla Blanca Park is owned and operated by Cameron County, Texas.
It is at the southern tip of South Padre Island and has hundreds of full service sites for snowbirds, overnight visitors, campers. It is a destination for most, a stop on the road for some, and it is a good place to enjoy sun and surf. This year has been one of good weather, locals say, but the Gulf is still too cold to swim in, wind gusts, fog rolls in at night and sleeps late into the morning.
Snowbirds who come for the winter make improvements to their spaces, bring out decorations and sports equipment, set up whirly gigs and windsocks, and meet their neighbors. Some have been coming here thirty years for bingo in the recreation building on Tuesday, and Thursday night yoga, or pot lucks. There is an abundance of friendliness. People wave and say hi, stop to chat, help hold a line or hook up someone else’s rv, ride bikes in twos and threes.
Being in a hurry is counterproductive and, for all you care, the rest of the world beyond this little spit of land can sink into the ocean like the Titanic.
You can rent a space up to six months at a time if you decide there is no point going home.
I am not to that point, yet.
” Some days you do better in the boat and some days better on the beach, ” the fisherman in coveralls tells us as he opens his cooler and shows us his Pompanos and Whiteys, game fish in this part of the Gulf of Mexico.
The bottom of his cooler has five or six small fish and a small plastic container filled with fresh cut shrimp that baits his hooks.
He and his wife have been here since before sunset.
When surf fishing, you cast your weighted and baited hooks out as far as you can, plant the handle of your pole into the sand and watch till its tip starts to bend like a scoliosis patient. When you see that peculiar bend, you reach for your pole, set your hook, and fight your catch out of the sea.
This fishing spot is towards the north end of South Padre, past tall condos and hotels. The angler’s big white pickup is pulled off the beach thoroughfare made by tire tracks. Its tailgate is down and a tackle box is close at hand.
” How much is a daily license? ”
” Fifteen bucks…. ”
” What’s the limit? ”
” No limit…. ”
We don’t have fishing poles but next time they will be stowed in RV cargo holds with golf clubs, lawn chairs, firewood, and tarps.
Next year, seeing how things are going, we will probably have to have a license to pick up shells. For governments, every day is tax day. I’m having trouble this morning seeing why we need a license to fish in the first place? Last time I looked, the government didn’t stock the ocean. we already paid a fee to drive onto this county property and are renting rv spots for our rigs?
We are, bottom line, squatters on this planet.
If we aren’t fishing, we are biting, and there are costs to do everything, or nothing.
Prospecting is in your blood, or it isn’t.
On a weekday, at the beach, Neal prospects, Joan knits, Scott pulls his hat down and lays back against a dune and watches kite surfers move across the water. The wind is blowing, but it is better here than in a frigid north where a cold front moves down and throws a wet blanket over the Northeast, Midwest, and South.
At the tip of Texas, almost as far south as Florida, we are not immune from restless weather. Palm trees rustle, clouds hang like a boxer’s black eye, fog lounges on street corners like a thug.
Prospecting takes patience.
It isn’t long till our prospector comes back with his find.
He pulls out scrap, beer cans, foil, pop tops and wire. Then, out of his front shirt pocket, he brings the coup de gras – a corroded copper penny.
You know there are gold doubloons and pieces of eight not far from where this penny was found. Newspaper reports of gold doubloons found by farmers from Ohio walking on the beach surface every so many years.
Hope supported by facts is more than enough reason to prospect here.
Sea turtles can grow to five hundred pounds and range widely over the world’s oceans.
They mysteriously return to lay eggs on the same beach where they were born and man has been one of their biggest enemies since their meat is tasty, their shells can be fashioned into ornaments, their body parts dried and ground into Oriental medicine.
A sea turtle rescue center operates on South Padre Island’s Gulf Shores Drive. Volunteers staff it, donations keep it alive, and injured or sick turtles inhabit a series of lined swimming pool tanks inside the rehabilitation center.
Some turtles have been victims of boat propellers, some were injured in fishing nets, some lost a limb to sharks. Life as a turtle has dangers but when the turtles are recovered from their setbacks, they are released back into the Gulf, tagged, monitored, and celebrated.
Allison is a current resident turtle with a prothesis. Losing her tail, she has been fitted with a new rubber one that lets her glide in her small tank like a Gulf War veteran with new robotic legs. Victims of carelessness, malice, chance, turtles are easy to love and people support the turtle cause by buying turtle memorabilia in the gift shop.
Man too has his own tragedies to overcome.
Our safety tanks take the form of halfway houses, hospitals, psych wards, jails, and churches.
There are plenty of days we aren’t ready to be released into the world again, either.
This Padre Island surf isn’t the best but the wind here is usually strong and steady.
Kite surfers combine kites and surfboards and hitch themselves to the wind for free rides, skimming the top of the surf like stones thrown across the top of a lake’s surface.
Wearing wet suits, their rides today last as long as this wind lasts, and, in South Padre Island, the wind is no hundred pound weakling.
An older surfer with a red kite laments that there ” isn’t enough wind ” as he holds a finger up to test which direction it is coming into the beach.
Regardless of misgivings , he still gets his kite aloft, follows it into the surf, lays back, and lets his kite pull him upright. It appears, as I watch him, that he is moving quick, parallel to the beach, his kite blasted by the breezes
Letting nature pull you for a free ride is hard to beat.
Sharing the water with others who love what you love is also fun. There are several of these kite surfers out there, taking care not to run into each other.
Last time I looked, we live and play in a paradise.
Early, gold hunters show up with wading boots, windbreakers, wide brimmed caps, sunglasses, their gold detectors dipped into frothy water.
The sky, water, and beach run together like a tightly edited film. Everything in this landscape moves but seems to stand still. Clouds blow past, waves roll in, seagulls take flight. A raven stops on a fence. Shell seekers prowl and the gold hunters are left alone with their devices.
They wear headphones that keep their ears listening for upticks, bleeps of sound, excited electronics. All movement cancels itself out, like white noise on a television. If you are still and look straight ahead, all you hear is the wind and all you see is the horizon – frozen in the moment.
Spanish galleons crossed these waters in the sixteen and seventeenth centuries taking gold from the America’s back to Europe. For as much as was lost at sea, many times more got safely back to vaults and banks and the King’s Treasury.The gold funded wars, New World exploration, luxurious court lifestyles, foreign affairs, palaces. Merchants became rich, pirates created legends, and their names were stolen by professional football teams.
While our prospectors move methodically, a middle aged surfer adjusts his gear and prepares for another trip out.
” Not very big waves, ” I suggest.
” They are big enough,” he smiles, ” I am a beginner. ”
Beginning anything new in your fifties is something to write about. This much older than a teen shows me his black wet suit that helps insulate him from the cold Gulf of Mexico water.
Who is to say who is having more fun – those hunting gold, swimming, or riding waves on a surfboard?
It is a gorgeous day where land meets sea, whether you are on sand or in the water.
Old dogs are always learning new tricks.
Sand is the most common material on the beach.
While we walk on it, draw initials or hearts with arrows through them, there are those who use sand to sculpt fantastic visions.
Outside Pier 19 in South Padre Island there is a sand sculpture. There is sand art in front of the visitor center on Gulf Shores Drive. Even some creations done on the beach ,by anonymous hands, take ideas further than a small bucket, a plastic shovel, and a kid’s hands and imagination can ever go.
There are those who say we humans are sand, but gifted with mobility, speech, and the breath of life. We are walking dreams, puffs of smoke, fireflies on a dark evening, mermaids doing the backstroke on a midsummer night’s swim. Shakespeare, as a writer using sand instead of words, would have built incredible sand castles surrounded by moats and topped with colorful flags. On the plains outside the moat would be raging battles ,and, in the highest towers ,huddled men would plot while women played lutes and whispered court scandal.
Sand in Michaelangelo’s hands would turn into lightning bolts flung from the hands of God’s.
This mermaid and porpoise make good companions. Flowing lines are always more peaceful than straight ones. This couple defines contentment and commitment.
They are waiting for the Sorcerer that froze them in time to relent.
Isla Blanca Park, at the south end of South Padre Island, is full of recreational vehicles that are more homes than campers.
Snowbirds come down here to the tip of Texas for months, unfold carpets in front of their rigs, set up lawn chairs, bring out plants and yard ornaments, and congregate with friends to talk about fishing, the direction the country is going, kids, and the past more than the future. The fifth wheels, motor homes, trailers are mostly new with multiple slide outs that gleam in the sun. On the drive down many acquire a coat of road mud, grime, and fallout from hundreds of miles traveling down from Canada, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan.
This morning men clean one of our neighborhood RV’s from top to bottom. After the wash, they hand wax and polish till this unit looks like it did when it came off its showroom floor.
Dave, who brought his Air stream trailer, contracts them to wash and wax his truck and trailer for a hundred and thirty dollars using a special Air stream wax. Three Mexican contractors finish it in half a day.
Like at the Happy Trails Resort in Surprise, vacationers are not concerned with the nationality of the men or their wives or girlfriends doing the job. They are here, ready to work, have tools and experience, and turn out service that gets them referred all the way down the street.
RV’s, like boats, take hands on attention.
Being retired comes with responsibilities to do as little as you can for as cheap as you can get someone else to do it.
People love dogs.
Dogs behave as we humans should behave. They are loyal, patient, love unconditionally, and show affection.
Many retirees who pull their Rv’s to the Isla Blanca Park in South Padre Island, Texas do so because they don’t want to leave their dogs home with strangers or alone in a kennel with other dogs where they pick up a lot of bad habits. It makes economic and moral sense to take your dogs on vacation with you because dogs are family from the first day they adopt you.
This morning two adults walk two dogs. Even though leashes bind animals to their masters, one senses the leashes could be released, the dogs would scamper, but ultimately return to their masters sides where they belong.
This morning humans wouldn’t think about letting their best friends run away from their side.There is a $2000 fine if dogs are found running loose and the beach is patrolled by uniformed men in official trucks.
People love dogs more than money, but not by much.
Seagull Charley doesn’t come when you call his name.
Without a fish for Charley, he ain’t going anywhere and he won’t push tennis balls with his beak or do circus tricks.
This morning Charley strolls the beach watching for opportunities. What he catches is his and he will share only if he has a mind too.
There are dining opportunities on this beach all the way north to Corpus Christi and south to Mexico and when waves go out Charley quickly covers his little piece of real estate. He doesn’t own anything but his feathers but his basic rules are self preservation, having a full stomach, and taking care of Mama Charley and the kids.
When Charley leaves the beach and takes flight, this Padre Island strip of sand seems more isolated and less friendly.
In air, between sand and sea, Charley is free,and,oddly enough, it makes me feel free too as I watch him glide in the wind above me.
Wanting to fly has been a long time dream of our human species.
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