Posts Tagged With: South Padre Island

2023 Trip 8: Flagstaff, South Texas & Mississippi River: Dec. 31-Jan.1

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Ed Heimel and Chris Klejbuk, MN travel bloggers; ckeh72@comcast.net

Port Aransas, Texas Monday Jan 1

End of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. Not a time to plan to visit local attractions. We are in Port Aransas for three nights, it is on barrier islands across the bay from Corpus Christi Texas. Before we left South Padre Island Saturday, we visited Sea Turtle Inc. Sea Turtle is a sea turtle rescue facility (rehabilitating injured sea turtles) that also works to help turtle eggs hatch and make it safely into the sea. The facility has several rescue sea turtles for viewing. 



Another claim to fame was their work in 2021 when Texas had a deep freeze, and the Texas electrical grid crashed. A lesser publicized event from this storm was the “cold stunning” of sea turtles. The ocean water turned so cold turtles went into shock. A new “record” was set with an estimated 12,000 stunned sea turtles up and down the Texas coast. Sea Turtle on South Padre Island and its hundred of volunteers played a major role in rescuing them. Even though only an estimated one-third survived, those survivors would not made it without human intervention.


Today’s only excursion was to Padre Island National Seashore. It is the longest, undeveloped barrier island in the world at 70 miles. It has sand and shell beaches, ocean waters, windswept dunes, endless grasslands, and tidal flats. We hiked on the beach and on a nature trail and sat on the veranda of the visitors center in rocking chairs talking to another couple from Minnesota.

Like many of you, we finished up the day watching college football.

Ed and Chris

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2023 Trip 8: Flagstaff, South Texas, and Mississippi River: Dec. 29

Posted on December 29, 2023 by Ed Heimel and Chris Klejbuk, MN travel bloggers; ckeh72@comcast.net

Holy Moly! Brownsville Texas is waaaaay down south. It is farther south than Miami Florida. It is at the southeastern edge of Texas where the Rio Grande RIver dumps into the Gulf of Mexico. It took us six hours of driving today to get here from Del Rio Texas.

What did we see? More scrub brush. Some hills. A few sheep and goats. Lots of wind turbines. Some oil pump jacks. Very few cars on the first eastward, back roads leg of the journey but lots on the second southward, Interstate highway leg of the journey. And around Uvalde Texas-the winter garden of Texas-fields of cabbage, spinach, carrots, onions, etc.

We are here in Brownsville to visit the Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park. When Texas was annexed by the United States in February 1846, disputes over its boundaries and ownership pushed the U.S. and Mexico toward war. US President James Polk claimed all of Texas, including its Rio Grande River. Mexican President Mariano Paredes insisted Mexico still owned Texas, and its border was the Nueces River. The Nueces is about 150 miles north of the Rio Grande.

The battlefield terrain is not much different today than it was in 1846.

Palo Alto Battlefield is the site of the first skirmishes and battles of this two year war. When the war was over, Mexico had lost one half of its pre-war land, including what is now Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Utah, Arizona, and parts of Colorado. What an impact this war had on the futures of Mexico and the USA!

For the next two nights we are staying at South Padre Island. It reminds us of so many Atlantic Ocean beach towns with hotels, bars, restaurants, T-shirt stores, miniature golf, etc. except it is in Texas.

Ed and Chris, South Padre Island, Texas, Dec. 29

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