I wanted to be a beach bum, but I wasn't qualified

A van enjoying the Padre Island beach

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I spent some time today getting the Arctic Fox ready to drag up to discount tire for a new pair of shoes, two pair actually. It's only about 20 miles or so but I'm dreading it because of the highway traffic in town. There's a couple of Discount tire stores that are closer to me than the one I'm going to but because of there parking lot arrangements and my limited backing skills, they would be extremely difficult to get the Arctic Fox in and out of.


I'm starting to get a little antsy and ready to move on. By the time I leave I will of been here a month and I think that's long enough. I've been kind of disappointed in life on the beach, it sounded a lot more glamorous thinking about it than it actually turned out to be. And there are some obvious reasons why there's hardly anybody here in the winter.

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If you look at the beach pictures that I've posted you will notice there's hardly anybody in them, and that didn't take any planning on my part, that's the way the beach looks almost all the time. Part of the problem is there's three things that need to happen before the beach is much fun, warm day, sunny day, calm winds. But in the winter time it's extremely difficult to get all three of those things on the same day, you can get one, maybe two, but seldom all three.


Rust is another problem. The air at the beach is humid and salty and that's a deadly combination for metal. I've got rust in places that I've never seen rust before, even with all the traveling I've done, some places I'll be able to fix with a little Rustoleum paint, other places will just have to stay that way.

Sand has been a problem. The sand here is very fine and gets into everything, and having a 30 mile an hour wind blowing fairly often certainly doesn't help the situation. I have extending painters pole's that I use to put up my cell phone booster and my Internet antenna, when I went to collapse them down today one was hard to put down and felt like it was full of sand, and the other one I couldn't get to move, I guess I'll have to take them both apart and clean them once I get off the beach.


I'm beginning to think that a beach, just like snow, is best experienced from a distance.


theboondork

The Bob Hall fishing pier at sunset

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