Sand. SAND EVERYWHERE.

On Sunday, Eric and I drove the 4 1/2 hours from Austin to Port Aransas, a small town on Mustang Island, sandwiched between the Gulf of Mexico and Corpus Christi Bay.  You can drive there directly via the route through Corpus Christi to the south, but we took a more direct and scenic drive that required a ferry ride across the bay to the north end of the island.

Port Aransas has an amazing camping situation, where you pay $12 for a parking permit and are allowed to park wherever you want on 6 miles of sandy beach.  We brought along a tent just for this type of occasion, so we were really excited!

It is very windy, so setting up the tent was a little bit of a chore.

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise over the gulf!

Our modest campsite.

Good morning!

We are both so overwhelmed with the beauty of this place! After waking up it was time for a swim. 

We were entertained by the gull that decided it just wanted to sit on top of it's friend.  Or enemy.  Who knows.  It just sat there for a while, not moving, while the somewhat unwilling companion just looked irritated.

In the afternoon we went to the University of Texas' Marine Science Institute, which has some small aquariums as well as an outdoor wetland walkabout type thing.  Following our visit we drove all the way to the other side of the island and crossed over the bridge to check out Corpus Christi.

We think this was a parent/child pair.  Cute!

This guy was just hanging out in a nearby cage.  He was huge, probably 4 feet long.

One cool thing about staying on the Port Aransas beach is that they allow fires!  Monday night we had a lovely little fire and watched the moon rise over the ocean.  Eric dug out a little pit with our empty beer cans.  Classy.

It was fantastic.

Turns out tides change a lot, so while we were a safe distance from the water during Monday morning, we awoke Tuesday to find out we were a little bit close.

We seemed to invest in a pretty high quality tent though, so thankfully nothing was wet inside.  We moved back a good few feet after that one.

Tuesday was spent with Eric working at Coffee Waves, a great coffee shop with a friendly owner.  I caught up on internet related things, sent postcards, and got some laundry done.  For dinner we ate at a small local sushi place.

It is difficult to describe how beautiful it is here.  Although we are filthy (ocean "bathing" is all we've really done) and there is sand covering every thing we own, it is an incredible experience to fall asleep to and wake up with the ocean.  We hadn't planned on going to the coast, but it has just proven to be a reminder that while things may not always go the way you plan, the consequences can sometimes be better than you ever expected.

And now the iPhone roundup:

While at the Sonnenstine's we ate a lot of Terry's delicious gumbo, which Eric generously covered with a lot of hot sauce.

Our dinner at Casa de Luz in Austin.

We had a little too much fun at Toy Joy in Austin.

Vegan sundaes and root beer floats at Toy Joy!

 

We had dinner on Friday night at the Bouldin Creek Cafe in Austin, home to this neat pop can mural.

 

We also went to Lake Travis on Friday night to catch the sunset, but unfortunately forgot our nice camera.

Saturday afternoon wine tasting at Westcave Cellars Winery in Austin.

Lunch in downtown Austin at the Conscious Cravings food truck.

Our first sunrise in Port Aransas. 

Our rather submerged tent footprint on our second morning.

We HAD to drink the beer in order to make the fire pit!  It was terrible.