Camping's not as fun as it should be

Erin, the kids, and I just got back from a nice weekend trip to Corpus Christi. In spite of dire warning by park staff about a plague of mosquitoes of unusually large size, number, and vigor, we decided to go with our original plan to camp at the National Seashore on Padre Island. This is the campground where my family spent many a happy week camping when we lived in Houston. Though after this last weekend, I’m pretty sure that we must have been older than Ian (2.5 yrs) and Lily (10 mo) are now. We arrived Friday afternoon, hooked up with Jennifer Chase in Corpus Christi and headed over the bridge to the island. The drive was scenic, a straight shot through coastal prairie with occasional glimpses of dunes, the ocean, and wind-shaped trees. Cloud cover threatened rain all afternoon and evening, but provided shelter from the hot August sun, making for a very nice afternoon on the beach.

We stayed at Malaquite campground. The campground has been upgraded since my vacations there as a child, it now has private showers and the efforts of the park staff to anchor the dunes with grass and hardy runner plants seems to have succeeded; the sandy dunes that we used to camp among are now completely covered in green. Once we stepped out of the car, we were assaulted first by the heavy sea air, and immediately after by mosquitoes the size of quarters. A flock of them could easily have made off with Lily, but were much more interested in munching on Erin and Ian. On the beach the mosquitoes were practically non-existant, so we decided to set up camp on the beach. The beach below the campground has a strict no car rule, but Erin and Jennifer figured rightly that it would be much easier to unload the car if it were on the beach, so we unhooked the chain and drove 100 yards through the dunes onto the hard packed beach sand. We set up the Springbar screen shelter that mom and dad Lingard gave us for Christmas several years ago, securing with with a dozen foot-long sand stakes and one 2-foot-long superstake. Ian spent two or three hours running around scooping fine, white sand into his bucket and building a small city of ‘sand castles’ while we got camp and dinner set up. Jennifer was a huge help, mostly by helping to wrangle Lily, who is too young to leave unsupervised on the sand (she likes to eat it, or anything that she finds in it). Erin made some yummy chicken pot pie in our new 10 inch Dutch oven and we started getting ready for bed.

As soon as the sun went down the mosquitoes came out in force. At one point, Ian’s legs were covered in a black mat of mosquitoes, there was literally no visible skin! We got everybody bundled into the tents as quickly as possible, but not before Erin and Ian had received dozens of bites. I was moderately bitten, and I only found one bite on Lily after the entire weekend. Lily and I likely make more natural mosquito repellents than Erin and Ian. The four of us piled into the screen shelter, and Jennifer hurried off to stay in the cheep dome tent we gave her. I discovered that there are some cool beetles, about 0.5 in long and quite narrow, with two bioluminescent spots (bright green, like the green fluorescent protein from jelly fish that I engineer into my plants, also like firefly luciferase - a peroxisomal enzyme btw) at the base of their wings. One of these beetles hitched a ride on my back into the tent, so did a handful of mosquitoes. That night, we discovered a design flaw in the screen shelters - the doors do not seal at the base of the tent, providing a convenient entrance for mosquitoes attracted to CO2 that we respired into the tent all night long. Mosquitoes are also attracted to body heat, but the air was about body temperature, so that wasn’t likely as much of an attractant. I got maybe one or two bites during the night, Erin and Ian each got easily three dozen. In the morning, Ian’s fair skin on his neck and legs was red and swollen from all of the mosquito bites. Whenever he saw one of the buggers land on him or felt it bite, he would point and say ‘ahhhh’ and wait for somebody to slap it off of him.

We had a great time playing in the beach the next morning. The mosquitoes were pretty much gone with the morning breeze, which also helped to keep the sun from being too hot. Erin made yummy cinnamon rolls, Ian played in the sand some more, and I got to break out my Ocean Kayak. We all took turns riding it. There were just enough waves to make it interesting. I made Ian come out with me twice, he took a couple of waves full on in the face and decided that he was done. I couldn’t get him to come out with me for the rest of the trip and was reminded of all the times that my dad had to force me into the sailboat with him when we were at the beach. I was always terrified and would cower in the bottom of the boat trying to disappear into my life vest. At the time I really hated it, and probably was pretty mad at my dad. Now, I’m glad that he forced me to do it, eventually I learned to love the speed and the challenge of sailing. I could see a similar pattern begin to establish itself between me and Ian.

After 3 to 4 hours of playing on the beach, Ian started to go completely crazy, he was hot, thirsty, tired, and done being sandy. Erin and I realized that we are not ready for beach camping with babies and threw all of our stuff back into the minivan. On the way back to Jennifer’s house, we hooked up with her roommate, who was sailboarding in the park at a really cool beach called Bird Island. It is on the bay side of the island, so the water was flat (no waves) and shallow for hundreds of yards off shore. There were easily 40 people out on sail boards enjoying the light wind. Jennifer’s room mate is a champion amateur wind surfer, and she agreed to give me some pointers. I was mostly interested in learning to beach start. After about 15 minutes of instruction and pointers, I was off and running. I brought the board that Erin’s brother Eric gave me, but ended up using Jennifer’s roommate’s board. In the end, we left Eric’s windsurfer with Jennifer. It is too hard for us to find time to use it with two babies to wrangle, and the best chance that we will use it is if we go and visit Jennifer again. With both kayaking and windsurfing under my elastic waistband, I was feeling like the day was a complete success. We stayed the night at Jennifer’s house, a nice little red brick 1920’s house that is a block from the beach in Corpus Christi.

We spent Sunday doing a few touristy things in Corpus Christi. I fell completely in love with the town and would move there in a heartbeat. It is not often that you find an area with year-round warm, white sandy beaches and blue water near a relatively large town that is as underdeveloped as Corpus Christi. The houses by the beach in town are all charming Mediterranean or plantation style, or pleasing blends of the two styles. Housing seems to be very affordable. A&M has a small campus there, I’ll have to watch for when they hire a new biology faculty member.

Overall, we learned that the cheapest option for a weekend getaway - camping - is pretty unaccessible to us until we can either fix our tent or have older children or both.