The travels of the Rambling Roses: Two days in Rockport/Fulton March 8-9

When we talked to the owner of Hatfields BBQ last night, he told us that nothing in Corpus Christi would compare to the Oysterfest that was happening in Fulton over the next few days. We decided to check it out, but it didn't open until 5 pm, so we went Jeeping on Friday afternoon. We headed south, and went through Port Aransas, which is the gateway to Padre Island. It was twenty miles south, and a short ferry ride. We were told that it was party central for spring break kids that were headed to North Padre Island. It looked the part, so we cruised through and headed further south to Mustang Island State Park, which was recommended to us by someone, and we spent some time there, driving on the beach, walking out onto the jetty, taking pictures, and the such. We were told by the ranger that the place would be full by evening, mostly with spring breakers tenting on the beach. I guess that's the cheapest way to do spring break, and lots of kids party on the beach. We had thought about staying here, but the whole spring break atmosphere made it easy to decide to pass it up. It was set up in a very similar way to Galveston Island State Park, where we had just stayed, and the weather really wasn't supposed to cooperate, with highs in the 60's and potential rain.

Visitor's center - note the plant in bloom.

Mustang Beach

Climbing on the jetty

Pelicans doing a flyover!

Portuguese man o war

These were washing up all along the beach - we also saw them down on Padre Island

We continued south into the Padre Island National Seashore and went about 10 miles to the visitor center, where we spooked around for a while. It was another 100 miles or so to south Padre Island, which was described to us by Yardbird and Gisele Baldwin as driving on the Outer Banks of NC, until you come to a town similar to Virginia Beach( this is the famous spring break beach, about eight miles from Mexico ). Bird and Gisele left us in New Orleans and went all the way south on their motorcycle before going to Arizona, and he gave me a good scouting report. By the way, happy birthday Bird! With this scouting report we decided that we didn't want to drive all the way down there, so we headed back to Oysterfest in Fulton/Rockport.

Blow fish at the visitor's center

There was a pond in the park that was covered with ducks!

Bad ass cow!

It turned out to be a GREAT decision! The place was right on the Gulf, and the oysters, beer and music, as well as the atmosphere, was fantastic. They were expecting a total of 35,000 people over four days, but it was done in a very small town sort of way. We ate oysters and shrimp right off the boat, drank Lone Star and Shiner Bock, and listened to a band called Riptide. The band was lead by an Elvis look alike in a wife beater t shirt, and they played great 50-60's music (the Ventures, the Surfaries [Wipeout!], Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, etc), but the song that brought them all to their feet was Sweet Home Alabama! We had fun, and the party was over by eleven.
On Saturday we went back into town and watched the Oysterfest parade at 11 am, and went into the festival and ate, drank, and listened some more. We also got to see the men's oyster eating contest, where the defending champion, an older smaller guy, defeated all the big bubbas by eating 239 raw oysters in five minutes, winning by one oyster, a $200.00 prize and a huge trophy. They had a five minute waiting period to make sure he didn't yak them back up, then presented him the check. Tomorrow we are gonna miss the female contest, and the oyster shucking contest worth $700.
OH Yea- the belly dancers that we saw both days were the surprise event of our trip. These fat old women who couldn't belly dance worth a crap got out there and people loved em. I expected, maybe a lasso contest, not belly dancers! AND- we learned how to say yee haw in Greek. OPA! That's what they said while they danced. I learned how to say yee haw in CoonAss Cajun last week. Po yie(pronounced poo yea). Now I can say yee haw in three different languages!