Crowded Beach Spots vs. Empty Campground

I’m lying on my folding sofa with my iPad on my lap, looking out over water, and there’s a bit of wind, so the water’s choppy and hitting the bulkhead in a splishy-sounding, fast rhythm. In the distance, the sun is rising over the water, and I am all alone out here. So right now, my vote is for Crowded Beach Spot.

It’s the weekend, though, and you know what that means about popular camping spots. Give this an hour and I’ll be voting for Empty Campground!

We’re in yet another beautiful Texas park with beach-side camping, Goose Island State Park. There are no dunes or marshes between us and the water, just a small bit of sand and a bulkhead keeping back a large bay: Aransas Bay. We’re at one of nine coastal ecosystems along this long string of bays, the third of what we hope will be five camping spots this season.

When we picked out our site months ago from online images, the whole thing was tricky. You’ve got this line of concrete cabanas, and somewhere in there you’re supposed to park your trailer and truck. Google Satellite views show people parking all willy nilly, but a recent warning on the website said the sand between the cabanas and the bulkhead was too soft right now, so everyone has to park between their cabanas and the little sand road. As usual, I was worried how we’d fit here and Tracy was not, and when we arrived we backed the trailer in between two cabanas and put the truck in front, and all is well.

Bayside

This is the extent of our site. There’s a little bit of room on our door side between us and the neighbor’s cabana, not pictured, because, see parens. (Our first neighbors offered us upside down pineapple cake they’d made in a Dutch oven outside, which I should have said yes to. Our next neighbors set up a tent by our door and commenced to fish all day behind our site, shirtless with country music cranked up. I miss the upside down cake people.)

Behind the trailer there’s a little room in the sand up to the bulkhead. On the far side is the cabana, which, oddly, is tilted exactly so it offers zero relief from the sun or the wind. You can see from our mess that that hasn’t stopped us from using it, though. Tracy mounted our beach umbrella on the tripod he sometimes uses for our Starlink antenna, and that works well!

For one day, our neighbors on the cabana side were a ginormous church group, and I mean the speaking-in-tongues type of church. Today it’s someone whose trailer is making a buzzing sound like something electronic is very wrong. Do I need to say this? There is no privacy here, unless you’re inside your trailer.

Which isn’t a bad place to be! We saw dolphins swim by while we were sitting at the table the other morning. You can see Banjo pouts though: she likes it outside better, too.

Empty Forest Side

That’s the scene for the 50 or so camping spots right on the water: beautiful views, sand at your feet, and extremist religious groups having a meeting right outside your window. Go inland just a three-minute bike ride, and you find my version of heaven: an-almost empty campground.

Several times a day I ride my bike through this wonderland. Something like 75 campsites, with maybe ten people back in their sites, all hidden under beautiful live oaks.

It’s so funny, here I am camped where I can see dolphins from my table, and I’m riding around, taking photos of empty campsites. It’s the live oaks that have me, and of course the fact that hardly anyone’s there! When I ride though, if anyone sees me, they are so startled. You can tell they don’t see a soul all danged day long.

They’ve chosen privacy over beach, a totally valid choice, in my opinion. But, if you have just one weekend this fall and you’re hankering for the beach, I can see why you’d be where we are. It’s a toss up.

Old Trees, Endangered Cranes

In some spots in the woody side of the campground, the larger live oaks have been either damaged by storms or trimmed by park staff, so they look like Dr. Seuss trees.

My guess is trimmed. This is the tent camping area. Notice, too: vacant.

One afternoon, Tracy and I rode our bikes through the neighborhoods a little farther inland to visit “Big Tree” (that’s its name), one of largest live oaks anywhere.

Big Tree is thought to be 1,000 years old and has survived something like 50 major hurricanes. (Its base is huge and protected by a fence, so no selfies). A couple of the lower limbs are supported by metal poles, and some upper limbs are wired to each other.

The oaks close to Big Tree don’t have such large trunks, but their limbs are more geometric and even more beautiful.

Some are oddly just one branch (or would you call that the trunk), which makes you feel like they’re all part of one root system. I don’t think live oaks work that way, but it’s an odd situation.

Maybe sediment has built up around one tree’s base? Just a guess. Maybe they simply grew that way. Here Tracy modeling for perspective.

Near Big Tree is farm land with a spot that endangered whooping cranes frequent.

Tracy wasn’t as thrilled to see them as I was, because he counts this as cheating: the land owner has a special bird feeder that lures the cranes here, so they’re a known sight. Still, only decades ago there were only like 40 of them on the planet, and now there are only a few hundred. They’re the tallest birds with a seven-foot wingspan, and when Tracy was watching them another time without the camera, he saw them spreading their wings. Very cool sightseeing spot, in my book.

I bitch and moan about other campers, but all in all this is a really lovely state park. Today’s our last day here: tomorrow we try to camp on the beach like we love to. Last year we were thwarted by high tides that made the sand too soft to tow the trailer on, and ditto this year, so far. If research tomorrow morning says no or if we get out on the beach and we say no, maybe we’ll head early to Padre Island National Seashore.