The Beach

Thursday was the first sunny day since I've been here. For being so far south, it is not sunny here in the winter. It is surprisingly overcast and foggy, whether it's cold outside or 86 degrees. So I thought I would run over to the beach, which is a hop, skip and a jump from my house. I had to drive around Padre and Mustang Island a bit to find a place where I could park my car on actual concrete and not on sand. Because you are allowed to drive on the beach here I guess they decided to save the money and not build parking lots. I, however do not trust my little Genesis in the sand, the first week we were here, we saw some teenagers attempting to dig out a little 4 door that was not going anywhere anytime soon. I finally found a place where I could park on the road, hopped out and realized how windy it was, and a bit chilly, and actually quite foggy. So I guess it's not quite beach weather yet. I keep panicking that we are going to miss our small window of nice weather while it's still bearable to be outside and not in the triple digits. It was oddly beautiful, despite the wind tumbling peoples lawn chairs and towels, and the garbage that litters all the beaches here. I want to take a trash bag with me every time I go. There seems to be a plastic bag or some indistinguishable piece of unnatural rubber every few feet, it's pretty bad. But despite all that, the grassy dunes are really quite amazing and the wind made row after row of crashing waves, amplifying the ocean sounds. The water here is a green, almost a greenish brown. It's very dull

, unlike the bright blue of Pensacola. I hear it's darker because it is west of the Mississippi, and the gulf currents bring the run off this direction. The sky was very dark too, almost black on one side, giving the whole scene a very artistically muted feeling. The fog was very heavy, making people walking only 50 feet away from me disappear along the beach. It was pretty cool.