The South Padre Chronicles (Part 2)

Day 2 began with our making Julie's Cinnamon Pull-Aparts for breakfast - an interesting experience which leads me to remind everyone that an angel food cake pan is NOT a good substitute for a bundt pan when making this recipe. The butter/cinnamon from the rolls leaked through the bottom of the pan, filling our condo with the unforgettable smell of scorched cinnamon. (The terrible smell and smoke made me wish we had one of those Oreck Air Cleaners or even one of those Cheap Ionic Breeze Quadra Air Purifiers but alas, we did not!) Knowing we would have to scrub the bottom of the oven later only added to our upset over this completely avoidable turn of events. The rolls themselves were quite tasty, and the boys enjoyed them each morning we were there. Thanks Sis!

Once the breakfast dishes were cleaned up and juice boxes/snacks packed in our beach bag, everyone was basted in sunscreen and off to the beach we went. We rented a beach umbrella and two lounge chairs, set Sheila up with a good book, and Austin and I began to test the waves for "surf-ability". The current was stronger than I remember - locals told us later that a storm had passed through a few days earlier, stirring everything up. Austin would spend most of the day riding waves on his boogie board, a 3-foot long, half-surfboard flotation device upon which a rider places his/her upper body to ride the waves. He would ride waves awhile, the current would carry him north, he'd get out, walk south past where Sheila read, then get back in and repeat the process.

Braden played on the beach and in the shallowest part of the water, preferring the shells and gulls to waves and salty ocean spray. At one point around lunchtime, he got in trouble for something or other and went to Shelley for comfort. He crawled up in her lap on the lounge chair, and after about 5 minutes fell sound asleep. Sheila moved to the other chair, covered Braden with a beach towel, and proceeded to read uninterrupted for at least two hours while he napped! During most of that nap time, I was with Austin in the water helping him catch the really big waves. We think it was during this time frame when we both got so badly sunburned - him worse than me, since he hardly came out of the water/sun all day. He started looking pink to Shelley after Braden woke up, and she made him sit in the shade of the umbrella for about a half-an-hour, which he hated. But by the time we had all gotten cleaned up for dinner, he was clearly burned, worse than we could ever remember. There were several aloe vera plants in containers around the condo's pool area, and I cut off several pieces to harvest their pure, burn-treating goodness. He was really tired and still pretty sore as we left for dinner.

There are three places where we love to eat in Padre: Amberjack's, Scampi's and Louie's Back Porch. Scampi's is too nice (and pricey) to go and wrestle with a 2-year old, so we went to Amberjack's, saving Louie's for Saturday night. And thus began our encounter with the epidemic of surly, unhelpful service which appears to have overtaken the island. When we walked in, the hostess asked how many we had in our party. After replying, she barked "you know we don't have a full menu tonight - only the buffet and this limited ala carte menu", shoving an abbreviated, one page menu at us. Taken aback, I walked over to the buffet, and establishing that they had peel and eat shrimp and other acceptable fare, we agreed to be seated. Our waiter was moderately helpful, the menu items Shelley and Braden ordered did arrive quickly, but the stuff on the buffet line was just not very good. (Me to the dirty, disheveled buffet line guard: "What kind of fish is that?" DDBLG: (Rudely) "It's chicken." Me: (Cheerfully) "Oh, prairie fish! DDBLG: Vacant-eyed stare into space.) On the other hand, it WAS more expensive than we remembered!

Coming to the night's rescue, Shelley, a woman who plans for vacations like military generals prepare for battle, baked chocolate chip cookies (from the dough she packed with our other supplies from home) and we had warm cookies with vanilla ice cream back at the condo. We all played a couple of rounds of Animal Lotto (basically bingo with animal pictures instead of letters and numbers), more aloe vera, then it was off to sleep.