Hopefully the last of the cold here…

Wow, we can’t believe how chilly this winter has been down here on South Padre Island. Yet another cold front has brought winds, low temperatures and fog into this part of the southern tip of Texas, 

We will leave the coast and Isla Blanca Park after the weekend and are looking forward to a change. This winter has felt a lot like hanging out on the Oregon coast in early June… cold, wet and windy. I should mention that the temperatures along the coast in the winter are generally cooler for the highs of the day and warmer for the lows of the day when compared to temperatures inland.

The difference could be as much as 10 degrees or more on each end. As a result there were some days we drove over to Brownsville to walk around rather than stay on the coast because it would be in the fifties on the island and the upper sixties inland. We have come to call this stealing a good weather day…

Unfortunately this latest front has brought temperatures which start in the mid forties and barely raise into the fifties. Four straight days of this in the southern tip of Texas in late February has us really anxious for warmer temperatures. Looking ahead to our next stop in Alamo it appears we will finally get them once when move.

Of course we will miss our daily beach walks, the occasional trip to the brewery on the island and the walks along the boardwalks at the Laguna Madre Nature Trail. However we are ready to go and experience new adventures inland in the Rio Grande Valley.

And hopefully much warmer temperatures…

I have included pictures of the beautiful Roseate Spoonbills we have seen during our stay here. A small factoid about these spoonbills is that they get their color from the foods they eat. Crustaceans and other aquatic invertebrates contain pigments called carotenoids that help turn their feathers pink. The more carotenoids their food has the pinker they get which explains why the juveniles are mostly white.

NOTE: We are currently in South Padre Island TX until March 1st…

South Padre Island thoughts…

As our stay is nearing an end here on South Padre Island it is time to start planning for our move on March 1st. Our next stop will be inland in Texas for a month. We  originally booked another month here on the Island for the month of March.

However instead of spending another month at Isla Blanca Park we decided it best to cancel our stay. We did so for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons was we would have had to move to a different site and the site we were moving to wasn’t a very good one at that. Since we have to move anyhow we figured we might as well move somewhere nicer.

Another surprising and significant reason we chose to leave was the slow but certain realization that we simply don’t want to be here anymore. Why? Well, for one we have done everything there is to do (that we like to do anyway), not once, but several times. One challenge of staying long term on an island is that once you enjoy everything there is to do on the island it is an hour or more away from every other place to explore.

As much as we will miss our daily walks on the beach it was during one of these walks we came to the realization that we were ready to leave. More significantly we also learned something about ourselves.. We now have decided we no longer want to live right on a beach.. We aren’t saying we wouldn’t live close to a beach, it’s just that being in a beach town 24/7, 365 days a year is surprisingly now not in our future plans.

While we have eliminated South Padre Island as a future home we know there are plenty of other locations to check out. From here we will move over to an RV resort in Alamo Texas a good hour plus away where we will be able to explore life in the Rio Grande Valley sans the beach. We may not have a lot to do there as well but at least it will be different.

Next we’ll move north back toward Canyon Lake Texas to visit our son and his family again before starting a trek east. We will also spend some time in College Station, Texas (our original hometown) where we will finalize our spring and summer plan of exploring potential future places to live along the way to North Carolina to visit with our daughter and her family.

Hopefully as we visit more places looking through this new lens we will discover more about what we want and don’t want in our future home.  We have also come to realize that our home finding quest will be a marathon and not a sprint as it will probably take a lot of time to find just the right place where we can fully enjoy an active outdoor lifestyle.

Todays pictures are from the various places we have enjoyed during our stay on South Padre Island…

NOTE: We are currently in South Padre Island TX until March 1st…