We couldn’t have picked a better campsite to spend the Christmas week.

There are numerous camp on the beach locations along the gulf coast. Since we’d already been to Padre Island National Seashore last year and wanted to check out another beach area, we headed to Mustang Island. We timed it to experience high tide and unfortunately, there was little sand left at high tide.

So we headed west back into the national seashore beach area and specifically North Beach.  There was ample beach at high tide!

The Deets

  • GPS: 27.489536, -97.267944 (Google Map Link)
  • Easy to locate: Yes.
  • Public Land: National Seashore
  • Cell: Verizon – 3 bars LTE, Google fi – 2-3 bars, T-Mobile 2 bars but only up a little higher either on the dunes or in camper bed)
  • Crowded: somewhat and can be crowded
  • Clean: mostly clean on the park side, gets more trashy as you head outside of the park
  • Would we stay here again: Yes

Access to North Beach is from North Beach Access Road as you travel west along Park 22 Road. The road is before the Park Entrance. The permit box is at the end of the road. We drove north from the access road to find a spot we liked…it was near the end of the park boundary.

The Sunrise

Padre Island Sunrise from inside the Camper
Sky starts to glow
Sun is cresting the horizon
Birds glow in early light

The days

Soaking up sunshine, watching the birds and walking Cooper were how we passed the time in between jaunts into town. We drove all the way up the beach on Padre Island and then headed over to Port Aransas. Lots of fishing, bird and ship watching to be had.

Beautiful sunny days (most days)
My afternoon views
Bird watching
more birds
Just mesmerizing
White Tail Hawk with lunch
Lego block jetty in Port Aransas
Pelicans not working too hard
Waiting for scraps
The stare down…that’s my fish
Stop staring at my fish!
Saw one turtle near the jetty too
The pooped Coop
we walked a lot
Picked up and bagged beach trash daily
(yes, that’s a derilict trailer at other end of beach)

The Sunsets

The sun sets behind the dunes and most evenings it went unnoticed except for a brief pink display over the water.

Unnoticed, that is, until the end of our week; we enjoyed a colorful show to wrap up our beach camping trip.

From the back porch
View over stretch of sand

Where to Next?

From here we’re going to be tourists in San Antonio, Texas. Have some texmex, see the Alamo, absorb some history and see the colorful riverwalk area.