Trip to the Beach

I promised Audrey a trip to the beach, but wanted to do something a little different than what we did last year with Galveston and Bolivar beaches. They are good beaches to be so close to home, but they aren't the best beaches to experience. So, I decided to try Port Aransas - there would be places that we could sightsee and there would be a good beach to play on - and hopefully it would be pretty clean.

So Audrey and I headed for Port A on Monday. We drove down Highway 35 instead of going into Houston and taking 59 down. I thought maybe Audrey would enjoy seeing the water sooner. She was really great on the drive down - only asking a couple of times "how much further" Of course it helped that we made a rest stop at Dairy Queen. DQ's are a new experience for Audrey.

As we drove into Port Aransas, the GPS decided to take us on a tour of town to get to the hotel. As we were driving down the street, we saw Woody's, where I knew they booked dolphin trips. So we pulled in to see if they were taking any tours out. As a matter of fact, there was a tour leaving in about 30 minutes, so we hung out. For entertainment, there was a heron sitting on the pier that was obviously pretty tame since he just sat there and posed for pics. Later when we went down to the boat, there he was again. We learned that he was called Harry the Heron. Audrey enjoyed taking pics of him - I had lent her my point & shoot to use on our "vacation".

We took off and did see some dolphins, but the fog rolled in and we only stayed out for about an hour. Audrey really enjoyed playing with the touch tank that they had set up on the boat - she really wasn't all that impressed with the dolphins, unlike Aunt Maggie. Anyway, there was a hermit crab, some shrimp, a starfish and some other crabs.

After checking in, we went to eat at a Mexican Food restaurant - Audrey even picked! And then we drove down to the beach, and went exploring. Audrey had fun picking up seashells and she was fascinated with all the sand dollars.

We went to the beach the next morning. Audrey had a blast!!! We stopped to get a cooler and some snacks, plus a pail and shovel. The day was mostly cloudy, so we were able to stay at the beach for several hours before we both got burned. And yes, I did put sunscreen on both of us, but managed to miss spots on both of us.

There was quite a bit of seaweed on the beach - a problem evidently common to all Texas beaches. At first Audrey was really funny about not wanting to walk on the seaweed, even with her flip-flops on. But by the end of the time at the beach, she was slinging the seaweed out of her way.

In the afternoon, we drove down to Corpus Christi to see the Aquarium. I couldn't convince her that she wanted to go to a baseball game which would have really been easy to do since the stadium was so close to the aquarium. While at the aquarium, we saw a really great dolphin show, and they had a touch tank where we could touch stingrays and a small shark. And then we had to stop at a tacky souvenir shop. First, I had to explain what tacky souvenirs are - but you can't go to a beach town without going to at least one shop. Audrey got a whole sand dollar for her souvenir.

On the way back, we ate seafood - OK, Aunt Maggie ate seafood and Audrey ate chicken tenders. We drove around a little while - just to see what was there. And that was our trip to the beach!