We hadn’t been to the sea in a long time. That was the thought that came to mind the day before Mother’s Day weekend and prompted the spontaneous decision to complete our “down the middle” tour from March with a much shorter trip south from Austin.
After several traffic jams and a standard visit to BUC-EE’S (where we realized that our child no longer fits comfortably in the trunk of our new vehicle), we reached our destination in the early afternoon.
We started with a walk along the beach to the USS Lexington, and our photography student naturally did her subject justice by taking photos like crazy. That’s how it should be.
But since Celina had cleverly only worn her flip-flops, which look nice but are impossible to walk in, we decided to skip the repeat visit to the aircraft carrier and go back to the hotel instead so she could change into more comfortable shoes. So… what shall we do now? There were dolphins somewhere. Right, in Port Aransas by the car ferry. Okay, let’s go there. Maybe we’ll get lucky.
And there they were, our swimming friends. As we were told a few years ago, you just have to watch the big tankers that sail past here. The dolphins swim ahead of them and “play” with them.
Now that we had seen our dolphins, we happily drove on to the beach to splash around in the sand and water for a while. The nice thing here is that you can drive right up to the water’s edge. Texas style, you know…
We then drove back towards the hotel, which we reached shortly before a sandstorm rolled in, followed by a thunderstorm. Here we enjoyed the pizza we had bought shortly before and waited until an hour later when the weather cleared up, bathing the surroundings in a mystical light and revealing a magnificent rainbow.
The highlight of this trip was undoubtedly the horseback riding excursion on the beach, which was scheduled for the following day. The only problem was getting there. At the time of our stay, the Harbor Bridge was still a huge construction site, which confused both us and our navigation system. As a result, we drove around in circles twice before finding the entrance to the bridge. When we arrived at the riding stable, we were happy to see that only two other people had booked the horseback riding trip besides us, so the group would be small. But then a large family with over 20 people (including small children) arrived and also wanted to join the ride. Fortunately, the operators refused and the group remained small.
And so the girls rode on the backs of the four-legged animals through the dunes, flooded with puddles, to the almost deserted sandy beach. Here, they could relax and unwind while riding along (and sometimes in) the water.
Matthias, who prefers more than 1 horsepower, enjoyed the peace and quiet and the mosquitoes in the parking lot.
And then the short weekend was already over. Let’s see how long it will take us to come back here again…