We're Back!

So, I'm sitting here thinking, who needs Hawaii when there are white sand beaches on the mainland? I am comparing a $400 round trip, 7 hour flight versus a tank of gas and 5 hours of driving...warm water versus warm water...blue water versus blue water...calm waves versus calm waves...surfing beaches versus surfing beaches...laid back atmosphere versus laid back atmosphere...$5 milk versus $2 milk...Tiger sharks versus Bull sharks...I am sorry to say, Texas wins hands down. It's the state that I think has everything (sharks included).

3 days of sand, sun and sea turned us a crisp brown or red depending on the amount of sunscreen applied at regular intervals. Jonathan, who is not use to sunscreen, has a beet red nose, red shoulders, red forehead, red back, red pretty much everywhere. Tanner forgot to reapply sunscreen on the last day, and now has beautiful, glossy, red shoulders. All of the females of the species escaped unharmed.

Kate and Reagan fought over the "boogie-woogie" board. Georgie ate lots of sand, but by the last day she had learned that sand didn't taste that great. The girls are tired out and in need of a great deal of rest, but other than that we are well satisfied with our trip.

We discovered that the one thing lacking in Corpus Christie is a reef. Luckily for us, we stayed close to the shore. There are about 2 sandbars, 15 feet apart at the Padre Island State Beach Park. Since we had little kids, we stayed around the first sandbar even though the water was shallow enough to wade out to the second one. The very last day, we discovered how thankful we should have been that we stayed at the first one. Both Jonathan and I had been fretting a little about having to stay so close to the shore because the waves weren't that great.

At the very first we had decided not to go to the second sandbar because we didn't want the girls to follow us out that far. Johnny and I thought that maybe since it was our last day it would be okay to try to catch some of the bigger waves. We stood up to go out when Tanner shouted, "Get out of the water!" Now, I always take Tanner seriously when he has that peculiar tone of voice, so I grabbed Reagan and Kate and started to head for the shore. I heard Johnny say, "Oh, *@#!" That's when I started to drag the girls through the water. Then Tanner shouted, "Shark!" Then I saw a couple ladies on shore pointing. Trust me, I got the girls out of the water in record time.

Apparently it was a Bull Shark. And when we say Bull, we mean the size. Tanner says he saw six feet of its back above the water and never saw the head or tail. I got to see the black fin and it had already moved farther out on the horizon, and the fin was BIG. We spent the rest of the day playing in the VERY shallow water. Good thing too, since later Tanner and a couple other guys on the beach saw two hammerheads come over the second sandbar. Yes, Corpus Christie lacks a reef, but the US Park Ranger says it is very rare that the sharks come in like that, but for some reason that day they had been receiving reports of that nature from all over the island.