Padre Island

I know you must be getting tired of seeing beach pictures, but, really, there is always something to see on the beach.  On Wednesday, we went to Padre Island for the day.  The goal was to get far enough down the beach to reach Little Shell and Big Shell beaches to gather (I bet you can't guess!) shells!  Bob and Sid took their fishing gear and planned on fishing the surf.  We started out at 5:45 am to try to get some good pictures of sunrise.  Unfortunately, the day was very foggy and it was way into morning before the sun showed. 

The first 15 miles driving on the sand went pretty well.  But then...

Getting stuck

Getting stucker!

Luckily, we discovered that our 4 wheel drive wasn't fully engaged, so once that was fixed we proceeded through some very soft sand to past the 20 mile marker.  This was 20 miles of unpopulated, undeveloped, natural beach.  The sand gradually turned into thousands and thousands of tiny shells.

Instead of sand

Of course, I took pictures of the usual beach things:

A jellyfish

My favorite - a sandpiper

Seagull

Tucker playing in the surf

But the main attraction of the day was the fishing action.

Sid and Nipper on the way to fish

How many fishermen does it take to unhook a fish?

A pompano

A whiting

A Spanish mackerel

Fish tales?

Cleaning the catch

We found a few shells, but they were mostly common, small shells.  Big Shell beach didn't have ANY big shells on it but I did find a whole sand dollar, so I was happy with that.  

This was the view out the truck on the way back.  The fog had set in and the tide had come up, so we were driving very close to the water.

Until we couldn't drive any further.

By the time we got home, we were all very tired, so it was early to bed because there were more adventures to come!