Month: October 2015

The red tide wasn’t too bad when we woke up so we headed for the beach!

After lunch they needed to do some indoor stuff for a while.

Etch a Sketch by Amelie and Nadia

After dinner we told the girls they could go for a night swim and suddenly we became the coolest parents ever 😉

The annual sand castle competition was happening when we were in South Padre so we headed out to see the entries one day. It is absolutely amazing and artists come from all over the world to this event and their work is so cool! Here are some of our favorites.

 

 

We realized pretty quickly that Red Tide was going to be so unpredictable and that we would have to have back up plans besides the pool. Lots of people were wearing surgical masks or bandannas just to breathe. The island was mostly empty since it was the first week of October, but the weather was nice and most places were still open. Monday was a bad day for the beach, so we headed down to the pool to start the day. Fortunately the pool was in the middle of the buildings and so it kept the breeze off of the ocean away from our sensitive lungs.

Preparing for the day with sunscreen.

After the pool we had lunch in the condo and then told the girls that we were going to go on a sunset Dolphin watching cruise. They weren’t totally sure what that meant, but they were excited because I was excited!

In the Captains chair

The girls LOVED being on the boat and everyone screamed with delight when we saw the first dolphins swimming around the boat. It was fun to go all around the bay and even out into the ocean for a little while. Then we watched the sun go down and they took us back to the dock. It was a really fun time! We had so many amazing photos that I thought I would include the link to our flickr page for anyone who is interested.

https://flic.kr/s/aHsktK6yHw

At the beginning of October we made a trip to the beach. We decided to try South Padre Island this year and rented a place on AirBnB that worked out great. It was a condo and they also had a pool which worked out great for us because sadly when we arrived we found out that “Red Tide” was happening on the Gulf. What is Red Tide? “Harmful algal blooms, or HABs, occur when colonies of algae—simple plants that live in the sea and freshwater—grow out of control while producing toxic or harmful effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine mammals, and birds.” The toxins get in the lungs of the fish and other animals and they suffocate. They cleaned the beach each morning to get rid of the dead fish, but as the day passed more and more dead animals would float up. Then when it was really bad the toxins would float up and we would breath them in a cough and cough and cough. It was horrible. And stinky. And there is no warning for Red Tide, so we didn’t know. It was the great science lesson of the trip, but here are some photos of the times we did get out to the beach at the beginning.