Windsurfing

Wind Surfer wrote:
Rice, I appreciate your candor

Ha! I have pretty strong opinions on South Texas, most of them unfavorable. I just think it's ugly. And stupid. And I tell that to my grandparents, who are buried in the cemetery in Robstown (just outside of, and even worse than, Corpus) every time I go visit. :)

However, it's hard to beat it for windsurfing.

I don't think I've mentioned another option in Corpus Christi besides Bird Island boondocking. There's an RV park in Flour Bluff (the town before you get to Padre Island) called Laguna Shore Village. We stayed there in 2004, back when we first started fulltiming.

You can read about our stay in two reports: report #1 and report #2.

At the time, you could sail on the laguna from a vacant lot across the street, but it is my understanding you can't do that any more. You could also launch from some bandit sort of places nearby and might still can, but I'm always uncomfortable doing that. But since the time we were there, Bluff's Landing Marina (maybe 1/2 mile away from the RV park) put in a windsurfing launch. You have to pay a fee or get an annual permit, but it was purported to have a grassy (!!!) rigging area and a fresh water shower.

You could probably get more information on launching there from the Corpus Christi Windsurfing Association. They have forums on their website where you could ask questions about current launching conditions from that side of the laguna.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if Laguna Shore Village fills up in the winter--we got there in April and had only a couple of sites to choose from. It's an okay place--not somewhere I'd ever seek out if it weren't close to sailing. Worse, it's a few miles from any sort of grocery stores or other retail and felt really isolated but not necessarily in a good way. But if I needed a place to stay for longer than the 2 weeks allowed at Bird, or if I needed hookups (which we did back then and which I'd probably want in the winter), I would consider it again if I were okay launching at Bluff's Landing. Jennie, the woman who runs it, is really nice and I generally don't cozy up to campground personnel.

Do not be fooled if you see Padre Balli RV Park on the island. Well, it's there and all, but it's rattier than any other places I've mentioned in any of my posts, and besides, it doesn't have sewer hookups at the sites so it's not great for extended stays. It's "only" 10 miles from Bird Island, but when we're banished after staying at Bird for the two-week limit, we drive right by it on the way to somewhere, anywhere, else. We wrote about it here.

(Padre Balli, like the two RV parks I mentioned in South Padre Island, is operated by the county, albeit a different one. It was certainly no coincidence that LBJ chose a South Texas ballot box to stuff. :) )

You could also stay in one of the other RV parks in Flour Bluff, if you're willing to commute to sail. Plenty of people go from Corpus to Bird Island to sail, and being in Flour Bluff makes the commute shorter. If you like waves, you can sail at the Packery Channel, and that would be a shorter commute from Flour Bluff--much closer than Bird Island.

If you want to "live" and not just sail, you could also look into Port Aransas, where there are more RV parks--it's a popular destination for winter Texans. I wouldn't want to drive to Bird every day from there, but we did do it once. (And for the record, Carey rode his bike from Bird to Port Aransas and back one day, and everybody (himself included) declared it to be crazy.) I think people may wave sail in Port Aransas when conditions are right--I don't keep up with that sort of thing.

Another place where a very few people sail in that area is Baffin Bay, near Riviera (pronounced "ri VAIR uh"--so you don't embarrass yourself). There's an RV park there that looks like you could sail from, but we didn't figure out a way. Recently, some people from Austin were talking about going to Baffin Bay instead of Bird Island for a weekend trip and camping at SeaWind RV Resort there, so Carey wrote up a little thing about it.

The main problem with this place is that it is totally and completely in the middle of nowhere. I think it appeals to winter Texans who just want to sit somewhere warm and don't need any indicia of civilization around.

The Austin people ended up sailing Baffin Bay, but I don't think any have gone back, if that tells you anything. The guy Richie, who Carey mentioned in the report, lives in Riviera right on the water and is always wanting people to come sail with him, so there is that. But not much else.

So that's the situation on Corpus. Depending on your tolerance of a commute and of South Texas in general, it could be an option. It's definitely a place that people choose to winter.