Beach Trip 2016

A few weeks ago, Marci and I got away for a couple days and drove to the gulf coast.

The primary goals of this trip were to (1) spend some time together as just the two of us and (2) spend some time doing basically nothing (I hear people call this "relaxing", I guess).

The main feature of this trip was to head to the Padre Island National Seashore. The National seashore has roughly 70 miles of beach that you can drive along and setup camp wherever you choose. It is also one of the primary nesting locations for the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle.

The prospect of hanging out on the beach by ourselves and the chance of spotting some sea turtles was enough motivation for us to make this trip.

Once we got to the beach, we drove far enough so that we couldn't really see any other people. We then setup a sunshade we got for the trip that turned out to be quite nice. (As a person who lasts about 17 minutes in the sun before turning solid red, this was a necessity for the trip.). The sunshade was our base of operations for most of the day. We read books, listened to the ocean waves, ate junk food, and swam around in the ocean a few times.

Sunshade in all it's lime green glory

View from the sunshade 

While we were not fortunate enough to see a sea turtle, we did see lots of these birds running around the beach pecking at who knows what.

Birds

I took way too many pictures trying to get a "reflection" shot.

Eventually the sun started to set and so we moved our sun shelter up the beach to our campsite where we knew the tide wouldn't reach us overnight. We then proceeded to "cook dinner" (boil water, add to dehydrated food pouch) and had to use the truck bed as a wind block to keep the flames from blowing out.

Sun setting over the dunes, dramatic shot.

Sun setting over the dunes, part 2

Safety, is this how you do it?

 

Pretty colors over the gulf

Truck with sunset.

We finished watching the colors change in the sky and enjoyed some bananas foster for dessert (boil water, add to dehydrated food pouch).

Sun

Eventually, it got very dark. It turned out we were on the beach the night of a new moon and had very little light pollution. So, I decided to have some fun with the camera.

The stars at night... are big and bright....

Spelling backwards while running with a flashlight is not as easy as you might think.

The trip was both fun and needed. We couldn't have done it without the help of Marci's parents who held down the fort and took care of Owen and Woody for us. (Thanks!)