South Padre Island Texas

With all the cold weather, Bonnie and I wanted to get away to a sunny beach, but we only had a few days. So we looked through old Pilot Getaways magazines and found an article about South Padre. When a cold front went through Texas a week ago Tuesday and cleared out all the skud, we made reservations for the next day and took off in our RV7a. We enjoyed the warm sun which made for great walks and drives on the beach. The variety of shells made collecting sea shells a fun activity. The swimming pool was a popular location in the afternoon and the seafood was a real treat. When you go you must visit Dirty Al's for the best shrimp we have ever eaten. Temperatures were about 80 for high and down to 50 at night. For info, check out www.sopadre.com, we stayed at the Radison Resort on the beach for three nights. We flew into Port Isabel-Cameron County Airport, PIL, which has rental cars or Enterprise will deliver to the airport.


Flight stats: 379 NM from Granbury, Tx to PIL
2.5 hours down at 5500 feet, 55% power leaned to 6.8 gal/hr, 15 tailwind
3.0 hours back at 6500 feet, 65% power, 5-10 headwind
40 gal total for the trip

Airplane on the ramp, PIL is an old naval air station


View of South Padre looking north


Tom on the beach, you can drive on the beach North of town about 5 miles


Bonnie on the beach collecting shells

more pictures

Here are a few more pictures from our trip to South Padre. We sure had a good time and will make this trip again. Checking hotel rates, I see prices have jumped for March as the Spring Break crowd arrives so our next trip will be after Spring Break crowd leaves.

View of South Padre after take off from PIL


The wind does blow, these kites were up only the day we arrived.


View of drive in beach access north of town


Another view of South Padre developed areas


View from hotel room

Thanks for sharing your experience with us!

Tom,
Thanks for the extra photos! I have forwarded the link to my wife.

After she saw your first post her reply was "I would love to go here. It looks so relaxing."

We're in north Louisiana so we can be there in about 2.5 hours.
And a lot of the flight for us would be over the coastline!

Thanks agian,
Mark

Mark, we flew the beach line from Rockport down to PIL, about the last 120 miles, and the same back up going home. Nice flight.

Development

I was stationed at NAS Corpus Christi from 1964 through 1968. The ONLY thing on Padre Island at the time was a 1200 foot pier (Bob Hall Pier). The Gulf water was very cloudy with things that you could not see brushing your legs as you waded in the surf. One time was enough in the four years I was stationed there. My fondest memory was trading simulator instrution for Bell 47 instruction.