Sunday, January 29th, 2006 - Drive to Padre Island National Seashore.

After taking one more quick shower "just in case" we wouldn't have any available in our next campground, we had breakfast and continued our drive north and east to Corpus Christi, Texas, and on to Padre Island National Seashore. We had planned to arrive fairly early to ensure getting a campsite, and in fact we arrived shortly before noon and got one of only 3 unoccupied sites in the Malachite Campground; the park service had closed 1/2 of the campground to renovate the sites that had been damaged by last year's hurricane, so there were only half as many sites available as usual. Later in the afternoon the campground was completely filled and we saw several RVs turn around and leave when they couldn't find a free space.

After lunch and resting a bit, we unloaded the bicycles and rode 1/2 mile or so to the Visitor Center, which had very nice exhibits on the history and ecology of Padre Island. Although over 100 miles long, Padre Island is a quite recent geological phenomenon, dating back only about 3,000 years. A couple of distinct but related nomadic Indian tribes lived in the area in a typical hunter/gatherer fashion, but they were displaced by first the Spanish and then the Americans who colonized and settled the area. The National Seashore was created in 1962 to preserve and protect about 60 miles of the island. Park Rangers offered a guided beach walk at 10 every morning and some kind of discussion of the National Seashore every afternoon at 1 p.m., so we decided to do those things on the morrow.

In contrast to the heavy development on South Padre Island, the National Seashore was almost entirely undeveloped and that gave us quite a change in camping ambiance. We were still so close to the beach that the sound of the surf was a constant background noise, but instead of being chock-a-block with other RVs in a parking lot across the street from the beach, we each had our designated little campsite with a picnic table and there was a line of low, unspoiled dunes between us and the beach. In fact a Great Blue Heron was standing right at the crest of those dunes beside our campsite during the entire late afternoon, a picturesque if rather puzzling camping companion.

Although Malachite campground had no hookups, the bathrooms were thankfully of the flushing commode variety that is our favorite but the showers had only cold water. So if we could learn to tolerate cold showers we could stay almost indefinitely if only I could devise a good way to keep our trailer battery and all our other electrical equipment charged. Part of the solution was an AC inverter that I had installed after we returned from Wanderung 8 in the Southwest. We could use that to convert the trailer battery's 12 volt Direct Current to 120 volt AC which could be used to charge computers, camera batteries, etc. However, I found out that using the inverter added a noticeable drain to the trailer battery, so the final part of the solution was finding a 12-volt charger for the trailer battery. That made me consider the relative merits of solar chargers (lightweight but awkward, relatively inexpensive to buy, require strong sunlight, weak 12-volt charge) versus gasoline generators (heavy but compact, relatively expensive, require gasoline, strong 12-volt charge). I pondered that while we had dinner and then we settled in for the night, once again reading our book by a fluorescent lantern.