Friday, January 27th, 2006 - Bicycling on South Padre Island.

This was the day we had planned a bicycle ride up South Padre Island, so after a gorgeous sunrise and a morning telephone chat with research colleagues back at GMU we saddled up our bikes and rode straight north from our campground.

The first 4.5 miles up to the convention center was the part of South Padre Island that was already developed. In that section the 4-lane road had broad, smooth shoulders that were used by a lot of bicyclists, and since the automobile speed limit was down to 30 miles per hour we all got along quite well. Along the way we counted 22 large, typically garish shops selling T shirts and beach apparel, and I'm pretty sure we missed a couple of those, but that should tell you what kind of a strip it was.

After the convention center the road narrowed to two lanes and the shoulder became noticeably rougher, but we continued on for another couple of miles until we found the entrance to another county park. They also offered "dry" camping in their parking lot, but the price would have still been $15 and we would have had Porta-Potties instead of nice flush toilets, so we were happy that we had set up in Isla Blanca Park. All vehicles had to pay entrance fees, but since we were on bicycles we didn't count as a vehicle and could get in for free. Parking the bikes, we did a bit of beachcombing to stretch the kinks our of our legs before turning around and bicycling back to town.

We took a break at the convention center where we walked a nature trail set on a boardwalk. The trail was shaped like an uneven "Y", and at the tips of the Y were bird observation blinds. We saw huge flocks of birds, mostly seagulls and coots (I think!) at one of the blinds, and at the other we saw a ton of turtles and a little fuzzy duckling of some kind who was desperately trying to not be eaten. The trail also advertised alligators, but as usual they weren't where they were supposed to be.

You can learn some awfully interesting and potentially useful things on nature trails. Usually that information is mundane like which plants are edible and which are poisonous, but in this case one tidbit of information would be much more important to anybody contemplating buying a condo on South Padre Island. It seems that construction of jetties to keep channels clear has stopped the natural replenishment sand that used to drift up from Mexico. The natural result is that South Padre Island is eroding away by 9 to 10 feet per year. So Uncle Bob's Big Fat Hint to people buying an island condo would be to pace off the distance from their condo building to the high water mark on the beach, then divide that by 10 to get the number of years they have until the waves are lapping at their front door. It would seem to me only sensible to limit the length of the mortgage you will take out to that number of years, because you surely don't want to be making mortgage payments on property that has already washed away into the Gulf of Mexico!

Continuing south through the developed section of the island we stopped one more time for lunch at a combined A&W and Kentucky Fried Chicken. That meant we had a variety of entrees to choose from for lunch, but it was plain old American fast food, not Betty's! After lunch we rode back to camp to wrap up the bike ride. Since swimming was still too dangerous due to the high surf, Monika decided to go wading along the beach for a while, and I just took a nap. Later that afternoon we drove out to mail some letters and fill up the truck as that is always easier when we aren't towing the trailer. Since we were already halfway up the island drive, we drove out to the end of the road to see what was there, which turned out to be simply a lot of sand dunes.

While we were out and about, we visited a Dairy Queen to use our "2 for 1" coupon. I had a banana split for old time's sake and Monika tried the Pecan Mudslide, and the banana split was just the way I remembered from our days in Oklahoma in 1971-1972. Back then we would wait for the banana splits to come on sale for something like 49 cents, and then we would go to DQ and have one apiece. And you wonder why I developed clogged coronary arteries already in my 40s?

When we returned to camp Monika downloaded pictures and I brought the journal up to date, but our battery-powered gear was once again starting to run low. Most critically we were down to the last battery for our camera because I had forgotten to charge one of the 3 batteries for it at our campsite in San Antonio. Amazing how some slight omissions will come back to bite you. I had my eyes peeled for any solar electric battery chargers, but none of the stores we were patronizing seemed to stock them. After a restful evening reading we hit the sack early in preparation for moving the trailer further up the coast on the morrow.