MUSTANG ISLAND STATE PARK

Being a self-employed working person, I'm used to frantic schedules and hyper-travel, but what I just did was a bit extreme even for me.  I mobilized from Houston to Corpus Christi for a business meeting and, not knowing how long the resulting work might last, I booked a few nights in Mustang Island State Park.  But then the schedule changed, and I ended up returning to Houston within 28 hours of my initial departure.  My head spins, but I did manage to squeeze in a good walk on the beach on the evening of my arrival.  Here are a few pics.

Unlike my recent night on the beach at Bolivar Flats, I would not take our Airstream Interstate onto this beach.  Too much loose and uncompacted sand and too many soft spots.  Most passenger cars could probably do it safely, but not an eight thousand pound van.  The adjacent Padre Island is something of a rite of passage for beach boondocking, but if that, too, looks like this, I'll be crossing it off my list of possibilities. 

The beach is subtly distinct from those a few hundred miles up the coast.  This is not just a "grass is greener" perception.  The water really is bluer.

To make a long story short, it has to do with sediment.  The Corpus Christi area is visible southwest of Houston, by about 1.5 widths of the word "Houston" in this NASA photograph which shows river plumes.   

That plus the lower intensities of urbanization and industrialization combine to preserve a more pristine environment (about 0.5 million people in the Corpus Christi metro area vs. 6.5 million in greater Houston).

The air is cleaner.  The sky is bluer.  The water is clearer.  The sand dunes are much higher.  The birds are more dispersed because there is a larger selection of places for them to nest, vs. a more intensely-developed metropolis with a limited number of natural areas remaining.  

We don't see signs like this around Houston very much either. 

See what I mean about the sand dunes?  Ours are meager in comparison. 

Prettiest shell I saw on my 2-hour walk. 

Their shadows and their reflections are at 90 degrees to each other. 

I saw lots of this activity, but caught no diggers in the act.

I had a reserved campground spot with hook-ups which of course I don't need, and so I spent as much time as possible in the parking lot with my back doors facing the beach.  The place was empty after the day-trippers left at dusk. 

The parking lot just before dawn.

After spending almost 30 years in this area but never seeing the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico, I've now seen it twice in the span of a month.

With unsettled weather in the area, this one was more subtle than the burning ball I'd seen rising over Bolivar Flats last month.

Gulf of Mexico pastel palette. 

The forecasts say that we're getting a cold front this weekend - in late April!  I might have to capitalize on that and go back out again, one last time for the local season.

Not necessarily gigawatts, but upon discovering no electricity in the run-down women's restroom at Mustang Island State Park, I was able to blow-dry my hair by running my dryer off our lithium battery system for the first time on this trip.  I was headed from the beach directly to a business meeting, after all.  Gotta look professional.  Those are the little things that can make or break the use of a van to enhance work-life balance.