After leaving Padre Island, we drove to Mustang Island and Port
Aransas. This was the Julia-planned portion of the journey where we
would stay at an rv resort and attend a festival.
We spent more money
that I would have liked, but we did have a good time.In Wisconsin, we have the luxury of good beer at nearly all of our
festivals. By good beer, I mean beer that has ample amounts of malt and
hops and diverse styles. Sandfest featured mostly Bud-style beers for
$7/portion. That didn’t work for me, so Frugal John bought a $12
plastic soda glass from the Pecos Pete soda stand (free refills all
day). Unfortunately, Pecos Pete’s assistants ran into technical
problems with the syrup pumps so I ended up drinking a lot of sweet tea
until the problems were sorted out. We figure I had about 7
twenty-eight ounce cups of liquid in order to get my money’s worth. I’m
done with soda and sweet tea for awhile. Julia had a couple of $7
Kölsch beers (a light German lager brewed at warmer ale temperatures).
There was good music and lots of people.
The
focus of Sandfest is the sand sculptures. The artist areas are
divided into professional (with artists from all over the world),
semi-pro, and amateur. It was all great fun. I learned a lot about the
process from watching over a couple of days. This was one of my
favorites by a Bulgarian artist who appears in the foreground of one of
the photos below.
I didn’t think much of the piece below in the beginning. It looked
like the artist was just creating a globe out of sand, but he was far
from finished. If you look closely, you can see that he created a hand
wrapped (squeezing) around a melting ice cream cone with the ice cream
representing the world/global climate change.
Here
is a sand creation of sorrowful Abe Lincoln. A Texan standing near us
said, “He can’t believe we haven’t closed the southern border yet.”
We
celebrated our last night in Port Aransas by dining on the second floor
porch at the Bluewater Cowboy. We ordered redfish and drum, along with
sides of mac/cheese, rice pilaf, creamed corn, and local vegetables. As
we were leaving, we saw this pickup truck.
Yes,
the area is still rebuilding from Hurricane Harvey two years ago. But
the spirit of Port Aransas is strong. I look forward to returning to
visit someday.
We are on our way back to Houston. Julia has a flight back early this week.
Update: The Lincoln sand sculpture won. The piece was entitled “Liberty Crumbling.”
