Day 10 -- to Padre Island

We spent a few days on Assateague, one of Maryland's barrier islands, last year, when the wind opened up a can of Whoop-Ass on us and pretty much knocked us into the next week. We stuck it out, and we survived, but the 30mph gusts crumpled our tents, crippled our morale and prevented us from cooking, eating, sleeping or basically doing anything at our beachside campsite.

We must be gluttons for punishment. Because here were are again, camping on the beach, in the wind. We arrived at Padre Island National Seashore this afternoon. On the way in, we stopped in Corpus Christi (which is hard to say -- I keep wanting to call it  "Corpus Crispy") for a few supplies and my heart sank when I stepped out of the car and was immediately hit by the stiff oceanside "breeze." I had been holding out hope that Assateague was a fluke, and that our next beach camping experience would be an idyllic few days of lounging in the shade of a gently swaying palm tree while the kids frolic in the water with the dolphins.

Yeah, right. So far, our experience with beach camping has been the furthest thing from relaxing. While the winds here aren't as strong as they were on Assateague, they are holding steady at 20 mph, gusting to about 25, and everything in our campsite needs to be tied, weighted or bolted down to keep it from rocketing off toward Greater Amarillo. Setting up the tent in these conditions took an extra hour of complicated choreography as the tent caught the wind like a sail and ripped the stakes out of the ground as if we had anchored them in melting butter and not actual ground. Curse you, Wind, for wreaking havoc with the tent, my hair, my dinner.

Ha. We'll all laugh at this soon. And in truth, it's not nearly as arduous as it was on Assateague. We are steps from the beach and the setting is spectacular. There are zero bugs, and while the air temp is 90 degrees, it actually feels like it's only a cool 89, all thanks to the breeze. We've got the Teardrop angled out of the wind, so we can keep a flame going to cook. It could be worse, right?