Malaquite Beach

Adventure Location:  Padre Island, Texas

Rolling Date: 3-2-2013

The Teams are as ready as we can get to be rolling in the morning. It should be an easy twenty minute effort before we roll. The next stop is not in Rockport. There is about a fifty per cent chance it will be San Pedro campground on Lake Amistad. Friday should see the Teams in Cottonwood Campground Bibe. All the Teams are looking forward to another great time in the nowhere land of Bibe. Maybe the lens of the camera will wear out from all the pictures to be taken.

This sign lets you know you are in the right location for fun.

This entire next set of pictures was taken within 100 feet of the Visitors Center in the sand dunes as you head to the beach. From the deck is a nice walkway to the beach. A new sign on the walkway caught our attention. Apparently it is now possible to get a guided tour without a tour guide at this location.

As you leave the walkway this is the inviting scene to get you on out onto the beach.

However tonight’s blog pictures were all taken in this large dune immediately to the right as you exit the walkway. The dune is a BIG one.

A bush growing in the dune at the edge of the dune was eroding the sand away with the sweeping action that the high winds caused. With each sweep of the leaves some sand would come loose and be blown to the grass area.

Nearby was a root and stem of a plant making themselves caves in the dune. Eventually the caves will fall and the dune will lose some more sand in its march landward.

Many of the wind sculptures are very delicate. A very important rule in photographing the wind sculptures is to take the pictures NOW. Within a few minutes they will be gone and another sculpture will be in progress. You cannot be waiting for the light to get just right because the sculpture will disappear before that happens.

Notice how delicate the sand is sticking out from the dune.

On high wind days when it is damp but not wet there are sculptures all over the beach. The OFM spent about an hour crawling around in the sand taking pictures of the sculptures. Folks coming by on the walkway behind him usually moved to the other side of the walkway as they neared. That is too bad because they missed a lot of neat scenes we got to see.

This time the OFM found a neat spot for trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.