The beach. We intend to spend much of the spring semester (forgive me, I will always think of the calendar year in terms of the education world. It’s just who I am), on a beach somewhere. Our plans changed abruptly in October but we are anxious to jump back into this little adventure come January. For now, the beach and our sweet Austin.
We are Kansans. Let me clarify. We are originally southwest Kansas Kansans and that means we are fascinated by water. Water is to be cherished and splashed in and savored and when we find it, by George, we want more of it. So the beach is just perfect for a couple of grown Kansans and their littles.
We arrived in Port Aransas right at dusk one night and were escorted to our site by the owner and another guest. We followed their golf cart along dark roads (I’ve seen wider sidewalks) and they shined their flashlights in my Danny’s eyes while screaming directions at us and at last we were parked! The plan was to just hook up as quickly as possible and seek out some delicious food as all of us had been foraging in the family snack bag for the last hour or so. When we opened the RV door, however, we discovered that while bumping across a huge pothole hours earlier, several cabinet doors had opened and shared their wares with the floor and the couch and the counters. You know me. I couldn’t just walk away and come back to tackle the mess on a full stomach. We stopped everything and started cleaning up cereal, balsamic vinegar, spices. It was a lovely, little mess and no, I didn’t take photos because while I love blogging, I just don’t think to capture the crazy in our life as much as I think to capture the miracles and the beauty.
We finally made it to that delicious food and the beach settled in on us. The salt water in the air, the seagulls’ cry, the ferry announcing its arrival. We couldn’t yet see the beach but we knew it was there and that was enough.
Over the next week we lounged seaside and also managed to get caught up on school work. We wrote loved ones’ postcards and continued to feast on the shore’s finest offerings. Danny makes it his business to devour as much fish and chips as possible and I focus on hush puppies and key lime pie. I would have told you all about it much sooner but the Internet connection at our park was pretend. The password was “islandtime” which we thought was quaint when first typed in but then realized it was a description of the wifi’s outlook on life and while that’s nice for people, it’s a pain in the tushy for Internet access. Danny spent his workdays at a local coffee shop and the girls and I did without but we barely noticed since (all together now) we were at the beach!
We did some shopping and scurried over to Malaquite (I’ll tell you about that in another post because monarch butterflies deserve their own space). We also visited the Texas State Aquarium and took a private, behind the scenes tour which made Danny and I question our professions and long to be marine biologists.
Port A, Corpus, Malaquite. Go there in November.