Odometer: 110227
07:30 getting up – 09:30 on Hwy 77 north to Corpus Christy – 130 miles through tropical landscape with lots of ponds and palm trees along the Hwy. We are wondering whether there are alligators in these ponds. We remember that in Florida they were everywhere. But here the farmers have their cattle grassing around, which would be a stupid thing to do if there really were any alligators.
In Riviera we take a short detour to the ‘beach’ – a messy stinky place. But on the way out there we see a cotton field which has not been harvested yet.

In Kingsville we take SR141 and quickly visit the first big cattle farm, King Ranch, in Texas which started off with 150’000 acres at the beginning of the 19th century and today has over 800.000 acres.

South of Corpus Christy we turn right onto SR70 towards the coast. Along the road we see a lot more cotton fields in all different stages from still green to already plow under.

We approach Corpus Christy from east and pass right through it to Padre Island National Seashore. The beaches look the same as on South Padre Island. We drive about 5 miles along the beach until the sand gets too soft for our Toyota – still the same. It’s virtually impossible to take any pictures without any trash. A ranger explains us that the current is washing in that trash from as far away as Asia, this is definitely very unfortunate, but a lot of the trash is obviously from locals.

We spend the night at the red roof inn in Corpus Christy and have some ribs at Tony Roma’s. After dinner we enjoy a nice Frappucino from Starbucks and take a quick look at the famous Shoreline Drive with its very nice estates (for the upper 10’000 only).