Ashamed. Have you ever lived so close to somewhere you wanted to visit, but just hadn't made the time to go there? A place in your own backyard, but you've had your sights so trained on distant mountains (guilty...) that you haven't considered anything closer than a day's car ride worth the trip? I have been so caught up with my travels for the past year, and with making sure my travels took me out of Texas, that I haven't even considered the diversity that Texas has to offer. I've said it before and I'll admit it again, I've got a bit of a prejudice against Texas. I have no real reason for it, and I know that I'm being stupid. To remedy this, I've been putting an emphasis on exploring the state I've chosen to call home, starting with short day trips and some weekend overnighters. At the beginning of March, on a perfect Spring weekend, my sister drove down from Nebraska and together we corrected the most glaring omission from my travels so far by getting our butts down to the gulf coast!
I've lived in Texas for a full year, and haven't taken the time to make a trip to the ocean! I am so ashamed of myself, but I was always looking North (and West) when I planned out my adventures. I knew the gulf was four hours away from my home, and somehow I always overlooked it as a viable weekend trip. Sure, I considered spending a weekend on the coast several times throughout the last year, but something always came up and I never went. I've seen the Pacific Ocean in Oregon, the Atlantic Ocean in Virginia, and I've been to the Gulf of Mexico at Galveston State Park in Texas, but all of those were on family trips, the most recent of which was ten years ago. Being from (very) land-locked Nebraska, opportunites to go to any ocean were few and far between, but now that I live in Texas I have no excuse as to why I didn't drop my belongings at my new house and run straight down to the coast. I should have, and I'm kicking myself that it took me so long to make time to go to the beach. When my sister came for her visit she arrived late on a Friday night, and after a few hours of sleep I all but dragged her out the door early the next morning, determined to finally go to the ocean.
We arrived at Texas's Sea Rim State Park at mid-morning and didn't take long to check in, pay for our primitive camp site on the beach, and get my little Toyota out onto the sand. I stopped just off the pavement, and before I could even turn off the car my sister bolted straight to the water. What followed was an entire day of beachcombing, chatting, looking for shells, and keeping an eye out for alligators. We started on the beach, walking a little right along the water's edge while reveling in the salty air. We both desperately wanted to see gators (neither of us have seen them in the wild) so we took a stroll along a boardwalk set above the intertidal marshes within the park's boundaries. We saw plenty of birds and had fun pointing out all of the blue crabs, but had no luck with the gators. We probably had no chance of seeing one anyway due to the numerous people on bikes, even though the sign at the entrance clearly stated no bikes were allowed. We found out why there shouldn't be bike on the boardwalk when a little family of four, the youngest of whom were on bikes, tried to squeeze past us in the opposite direction. They hadn't gone ten feet before we heard a great splash and whipped around to find the dad scooping his son out of the brackish waters by one arm. The child was fine, just a little shocked, but started freaking out when he saw his mom start panicing. I mean really, there were no gators, no fish, not even a crab in the vicinity, and the water wasn't very deep, just a couple of feet. He probably could have stood up and his head would have been above water. They got off their bikes and walked after that.
My sister and I spent the rest of our day wandering down the coastline, picking up shells and digging in the sand. We'd brought beach towels with us, and spent some time napping in the sun and just relaxing. We went to the nearest town to find something to eat, then explored the national wildlife refuges near the state park in late afternoon.We didn't realize it at the time, of course, but the two of us ended up so fried from being in the sun all day that we looked like freshly cooked lobsters. Oops!
Evening on the beach was amazing, with the colors and the sea breeze and the first stars blooming above a hot fire. Morning on the beach, however, was magical. We were up before the sun, when the first brightening of the horizon hinted at the coming of a new day. Everything was quiet, except the constant wind and the rhythmic waves at low tide. We picked our way through the beach debris down to the water's edge, and waited with the seagulls for the sun to rise. It is for moments like those that I travel, and I still can't believe it took me so long to get to the coast, even with it being so close to me. I was usually looking west toward my desert or the Rockies, however only in Texas can I reconcile my love of the desert with my rekindled love of the coast, because here we have oceans, forests, plains, deserts, mountains and sub-tropics, all within relatively short distances of each other; I think I might have to give Texas another chance.
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