It's a lovely day for a drive.
Greetings friends, and welcome back to Grand Adventure!
I'm your host Marc Guido, and we're continuing to head west
to meet up with friends for a Texas beach Thanksgiving.
We're bringing you along, so stay tuned!
Port Aransas, Texas sits on Mustang Island,
a barrier island in the Coastal Bend of south-central Texas.
At the south end of the island there's a bridge from Corpus Christi;
however, when approaching from the north and east,
the Texas Department of Transportation operates a free vehicle ferry from Aransas Pass.
Dolphins are providing us with ample entertainment during the brief ferry crossing.
We're back at Pioneer RV Beach Resort in Port Aransas,
where our friends from the YouTube channel Homie at Large,
our Salt Lake City friends Dale and Pat,
and our Texan friends Darryl and Jane are all gathering to celebrate Thanksgiving together.
While we're each contributing to dinner, Pat and Ann are doing all of the heavy lifting.
Pat's an exceptional cook,
and their new Alliance Paradigm fifth wheel includes a full residential-size range --
perfect for cooking an 18-lb turkey.
After spending so much time traveling with these folks throughout the summer,
it's heartwarming to reconnect for the holiday for one last time in 2022.
In between Thanksgiving dinner itself,
and the scrumptious turkey pot pie that Pat made with the leftovers,
I nevertheless have to make time to visit Snoopy's Pier,
my all-time favorite Texas seafood shack.
Pioneer RV Beach Resort offers 505 full-hookup sites on all concrete pads.
Facilities also include two swimming pools, a hot tub, three bath houses,
a fish cleaning station, laundry, wi-fi, cable, on-site propane,
and a golf cart boardwalk to the beach.
Many here take advantage of weekly and monthly discounts,
but we're paying the daily winter rate of $69 per night for a premium pull-through.
When we come right back following a quick ad break,
we're going to head to the beach before we go kayaking for dolphins,
so stick around!
Visitors can also boondock on the beach in Port Aransas in designated areas.
The entire Gulf beach is driveable the full length of Mustang Island.
Beach parking permits are required in season for a nominal fee;
however, that requirement ended for the season the day prior to our arrival.
Prolific numbers of clear jellyfish have washed up onto the beach in Port Aransas during our visit.
Another option for RV travelers near Port Aransas is Mustang Island State Park.
However, their campground feels very much like one giant parking lot to us.
Forty-eight water and electric sites are available for $20 per night.
Boondocking is also allowed on the state park's two miles of beach, tidal conditions permitting.
Darryl and I are heading back across the Port Aransas ferry
to do some kayaking in the coastal marshes.
The majority of Texas’ 400-mile-long coastline is protected
by a necklace of barrier islands and peninsulas,
broken only by a few openings or passes
that provide access to these protected bays and harbors.
One such opening is here at Aransas Pass,
separating Mustang Island from St. Joseph Island
and providing the primary access to the port of Corpus Christi 20 miles inland.
The jellyfish are everywhere in these inlets this year, too.
Our plan is to kayak the Lighthouse Lakes Paddling Trails network
established by the Texas Department of Parks & Wildlife.
However, the tides are exceptionally low today,
and we're finding our entry to the trail network prohibitively shallow to negotiate.
Disappointed, we're going to instead remain in the open, less scenic
Aransas and Lydia Ann Channels
to visit the Aransas Pass Lydia Ann Lighthouse.
Our change in plans delivered an unexpected benefit.
While far less scenic, these deeper channels are positively teeming with dolphins,
creating an experience that we otherwise would have foregone
in the shallower channels of the paddling trails.
The brick Lydia Ann Lighthouse was completed on Harbor Island in 1857.
It has been privately owned since the government abandoned the light in 1955,
and its owners have included the president of the H-E-B grocery store chain.
It still serves as a privately-owned navigation aid,
and as the lighthouse and grounds are private they're closed to visitors.
We'll have to simply enjoy them from the water.
Well, they work together to corral fish. Yep.
Like a pack of wolves. Yep.
These dolphins are everywhere.
We can hear them surfacing all around us,
we can hear them coming up to breathe.
Oh [censored]!
[laughter] That startled the living daylights out of me!
Daryl, what was that, maybe a foot and a half, two feet away from the boat?
I would say that's about correct.
I thought for sure that dolphin was ... (actually it was two of them)
I thought they were taking me out!
But boy, that was the highlight of the day!
What an experience, huh?
Well, you should have seen you jump!
[laughter]
I'm going to have to beep myself out on that, actually.
Yeah, maybe.
I'm pretty sure I had an expression that's not going to make it to YouTube.
Anyway, uh, let's head back.
Alright, sounds good.
Okay.
So we're going to get packed up in the morning and hit the road.
We have a huge drive ahead of us.
We're looking at about 1,500 miles, four nights, and four states
to get back to our winter base in Utah, and we're going to bring you along
because that is sure to be a Grand Adventure.
Also, the following week we're going to do our annual "best of" looking back on all of 2022.
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So until next week from the road, please remember:
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