Pirates Landing, Memorial Day, Part 3 - Sunday, May 29, 2016

After we settled into our room at Inn at Chachalaca Bend, we explored the grounds, then headed out to dinner at Pirates Landing restaurant. When we entered Port Isabel, we knew we needed to turn to the left before the causeway to South Padre Island. That's where we would find the restaurant. After parking, we walked into the building we thought contained the restaurant. All we saw were T-shirts, souvenirs and a fast food counter. Ummmm, not what we were expecting. We headed out the door, looked around, and finally found the restaurant. The restaurant also has a pirate ship that does three-hour dinner cruises, but that's not where we ate tonight.

Pirates Landing dinner cruise ship

Immediately after we were seated our waiter was right there to take our drink order. When he brought our water he also brought a basket of really excellent biscuits glazed in honey butter. Since our health cleanse we have given up wheat, but every once in a while we cheat. This was one of those occasions. We went through the four biscuits quickly as it had been a while since lunch. Before we knew it, he was back with a basket of six biscuits. Bob and I looked at the biscuits, looked at each other, and asked him to please take away the biscuits as they were too tempting!

For dinner we ordered the Hawaiian salmon. (What? There are no salmon in Hawaii!) It had more to do with preparation. I would have called it teriyaki pineapple salmon. It came with a baked potato with butter, and a plate full of steamed vegetables. We also had a side salad. Very good dinner!

Oh so good!

Interesting decor in Pirates Landing.

3-D artwork

Our waiter was excellent. He brought us stuff before we could even ask for it. Bob tipped him well.

In the courtyard outside restaurant are beautiful birds. There is a board that tells their names, words they can say and what their personalities are like. The cockatoo below loves to dance.

The town square in Port Isabel is a lighthouse

Barbie at the B&B warned us not to go on the island because it's one of the busiest weekends of the year. As we watched the bridge from the restaurant, we saw a break in traffic and decided to make a run for it onto the island. We headed over to the island at 7 p.m. Big mistake.

Here's the causeway, empty in both directions.

We drove across the causeway. At the opposite end of the bridge on the side returning back to Port Isabel was an accident. Uh-oh. That's why we didn't see a long line of cars coming off the island. We decided to make the most of it and explore the island while we were there.

Sand castle in front of Visitors Center

The paved road goes quite a way along the island. There are places where sand dunes are blowing over the road, so you have to be careful to get around the piles of sand without hitting oncoming traffic. You really can't see too much of the Gulf from the road because of the sand dunes and the hotels. Most people drive out along the sand to get to the water, being careful of course not to get stuck! We turned around on the paved road and headed back to the convention center.

The convention center on South Padre Island has a Wyland Whaling Wall painting we wanted to see and there is a free boardwalk out to the marshes next to Laguna Madre Bay.

Whaling Wall #53
"Orcas Off the Gulf of Mexico"

 

Bob next to the Wyland Whaling Wall

The big thing on South Padre Island, besides the Schlitterbahn Water Park, hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops, is the water. Cars and people were all over the sand both on the Gulf Coast side of the island and on the Laguna Madre Bay side of the island.

Laguna Madre Bay - hopefully the tide is going OUT!

They're very proud of their boardwalk through the coastal habitat marsh.

On the boardwalk to Laguna Madre Bay

We saw some birds, but enjoyed the views across the water.

Great blue heron

Common moorhen

South Padre Island Convention Center

At this point we headed back to the bridge. Traffic was backed up to the convention center to get off the island. Some people were law-abiding drivers, but let me tell you there were so many scoff-laws. OMG! Sports cars were speeding past us on the right in the bike lane. Macho pick-up trucks went speeding by in the center turn lane and they weren't turning, they were cutting into traffic far ahead. Police were going this way and that. Emergency vehicles the same. It was nuts!

At 9:00 p.m. South Padre Island does fireworks on summer weekends. We wanted to see the fireworks, thought maybe we'd park the car somewhere and watch. Hah! We stayed in the traffic to get off the island because it was it's own parking lot. Remember, we had been warned.

9:00 came and, lo and behold, the fireworks show went off in front of us. LOL. We had front row seats stuck in traffic.

We finally made it off the island at 10:00 p.m. While we were in traffic in Port Isabel. After we had come to a stop and were starting to move forward our car was hit from behind. Thankfully we weren't going fast, but I told Bob we needed to pull over and exchange insurance information.

We pulled to the side. The guy who hit us was going to drive by and not stop. Bob yelled at them to pull over because they hit our car. They wouldn't pull over. But the guy stopped in the lane of traffic, rolled his window down and started cursing the "F" word at Bob. That guy was way out of line. Bob kept yelling, "You hit my car. YOU hit MY car." The guy's wife/girlfriend was apologizing to Bob, but the guy kept hurling insults at Bob. They drove off. Another car pulled up and stopped. They had witnessed that guy driving erratically and irresponsibly before he hit us. When they saw him hit us they stopped as witnesses. The wife gave her business card to Bob. She is a parole officer. She had written down the license number and make and color of the car that hit us.

Because we were distraught, we pulled over at a Dairy Queen and called 911. Apparently our witnesses had called 911 just before I did. The Port Isabel police came over and took our statements, DL and insurance info, plus the license number of the car that hit us. The officer looked our car over and all we could see was a scratch on the bumper. He didn't think there was any major damage. By then we had calmed down and headed back to the B&B. We got in about 11:00 p.m. What a day!