Beach Day at Padre Island National Seashore
Went down to Padre Island National Seashore outside of Corpus Christi for a day of hanging out on the beach with the missus and testing out new gear this past weekend.
Supposedly you need a 4x4 to drive down on the sand and in the first test of my Range Rover’s “Sand Mode” it all worked fine. Probably worth making the drive down because the first 5 miles of beach were fairly crowded, so if you made the drive further (we went out just past 10 miles), you were rewarded with a patch of your own semi-private beachfront real estate.
It was very windy (continuous gusts to 20-25 mph while we were there) but the Hexa tarp held well without issue using the #50 stakes in the sand - although its appearance more resembled a mid-air flying squirrel rather than the traditional silhouette.
Set up the collapsible 4 unit IGT with the grill burner and sink from Korogi. Used the Regular table to add some working space on the end. The Dometic faucet attached magnetically at the end drawing from one of their jugs. Was quite nice to wash your hands and clean up. Used the Soft Bucket 25 as our grey water receptacle - made a nice big unmissable target underneath when pulling out the sink stopper and it held a lot. Was even able to use a #50 stake in the handle of it to hold it in place from the wind. Really liked using the deep folding mesh trays from Buenofe in the IGT. They have good usable depth but fold down much more thinner so it’s possible to fit all the IGT inserts - the sink, the grill burner, 2 deep mesh trays, and 2 covering trays into one Gear container. Was also nice being able to look under and see what was stored inside without lifting the covering tray. Used the mesh benches as shelves to keep everything out of the sand while the low beach chairs finally got to be set up out on an actual beach.
Overall a very nice day. All the equipment worked well and contributed to the niceness of the experience. Biggest learning point is that I really need a windscreen for using the grill burner in wind like that. Despite running continuously at max gas output for cooking, it took its time heating up and never got scorching hot. Still, with grilled boneless short rib, cold beer from the cooler, chilled water from the Shimo, and accompanied by that view - I can’t really complain :)