Padre Island Kite Festival

Denisa's sister and brother-in-law (Connie and Joe) visited us, and the Rio Grande Valley showed off that weekend. We had a beautiful blue-sky weather day, so we headed to South Padre Island for the annual Kite Festival. 

While parts of the show included an individual handling a single kite (or a series of kites that are connected to each other) . . .

our favorite was the team kite flyers that perform together. These six kites are flown by six different handlers that fly difficult patterns that weave the kites around each other and in sync with music. We have no idea how they manage to keep their kite strings from getting tangled. Part of the fun was watching the kites dip and dive through the air, and the other part of the fun was watching the handlers on the ground. They had teams competing from all over the country, including this team from Washington.

A good crowd showed up for the festival, and we all enjoyed the weather. It always seems to be windy at Padre with the ocean breezes. But the day of the kite festival was almost too calm. In fact, in the distance we could see that they were having a hard time getting the really big kites up in the air.

The big red/white/and blue stingray finally got off the ground with the help of the extra blue kite tied to it to give it some lift.

It's hard to picture how big these kites are, but when they are closer to the ground we could see that they were bigger than our motor home.

Now that's a kite!

After watching the kites for more than an hour, we headed to the beach. Joe drove his pickup through the sandy entrance to get us right next to the Gulf.

Mark climbed up on the sand dune to get a picture of that bright red truck looking good with the ocean in the background.

He also took a picture of Connie and Joe looking good with the ocean in the background.

After walking the barren Atlantic beaches all summer, it was good to be back on the Gulf to see so many sea shells.

Denisa wasn't the only one picking up shells today. We taught Connie that crocs are great beach shoes. You can slip in and out of them easily in the sand. But they also transform into a handy sea shell bucket that you can carry by the ankle strap. When you finish collecting shells, you can rinse them off while they are still in the croc bucket, and the ocean water drains right out of the holes in the toe. What versatile beach shoes! Our crocs have seen a lot of beaches since we started traveling full-time.

Denisa seldom keeps any of her shells, but she almost always uses them to write a word in the sand. 

Today's word is "Padre" since we are on the father island.

We took our guests to see the sand sculptures that have become a permanent part of South Padre Island. Now protected under a tent, it is a changing display.

The halloween sand sculpture is still up . . .

but the new year's clock has turned over to 2023.

We brought another friend with us to the kite festival, and we got a picture of Margaret and Betty in the sand throne.

We always eat sea food when we visit the island, and we went to Dirty Al's today. Later, we finished our Padre Island day as we always do--with ice cream from Dairy Queen. It was a good day for a kite festival at the beach, and lots of other Padre Island things.