Big Madre and Little Padre

Big Madre and Little Padre

After many miles of driving southeastward, hugging the Texas-Mexico border, we finally arrived at our destination. Fortunately, we had help with the driving, from a 9 year old, named Dixie.

 DOG is my PILOT

As you can see, though Dixie is only 9, her Labradoodle wisdom and caution kept our friends, Ken and Susan in good shape.

Passing Brownsville, TX and its Mexican counterpart, Matamoros, we drove into Port Isabel, with the only bridge access to South Padre Island. Driving over the "Laguna Madre" on an almost 2 mile long causeway, we arrived at the far south end of the thin strand of sand, running mostly north-south, called South Padre Island. The Laguna Madre is a shallow, hyper-saline body of water that separates TX from Padre Island (north and south), stretching over 130 miles to Corpus Christi. It provides a very important and large protected ecosystem for a huge variety of fish and birds, migratory and resident. Much of the TX and Padre Island shoreline is protected as National Wildlife Refuge and National Seashore.

We stayed in a KOA RV park on the far south end of South Padre Island (SPI) where all of the development is clustered. Since no place on the island is more than a few dozen yards from the water, we enjoyed the breezes and waterside activities. The KOA was quite nice. We hit it just right, since the Spring-Breakers had departed and the summer crowd had yet to arrive. 

Next to KOA RV Park

The primary activities on SPI are tourist-related (boating, kite surfing, beach play-building sand castles, etc) and fishing.

Didn't see any of these!

Our foursome went dolphin watching in the Laguna Madre with a Mennonite honeymooning couple, Gorgy, the dolphin-spotting dog, and Captain George.

Shipmates

Dolphins are easy to see when they surface, but she can apparently hear their whistles and songs, so would roam around the boat to stare at the water in the area where they were about to surface. It certainly made for better photos of dolphin, rather than just empty water. The tour operator often also brings along Penelope, the pot-bellied pig, but she was unavailable that day!

Gorgy, the dolphin dog

Dolphin 3-some, 2 adults with baby in between

SPI has plenty of wildlife, beach fun and quirky experiences to enjoy. More in the next post on turtles.

Barbara & Paul