Its about 420 miles so we left early Saturday morning and arrived about 2:30 pm after a short delay at the ferry. By the time we got settled and down to the beach it was after 4:00. We had just gotten into the water when Ryan let out a bit of a shriek with Marc beside him. I was in the water and about 12-15 feet away was a large fin! Ryan thought it was a shark and Marc didn't know what was going on, but it was quickly obvious that it was a 5-6ft porpoise just playing around feeding on the small fish. We hung out and watched the porpoise for a bit as it moved away. It never got that close again but was in the general area. A bit later we saw some other kids get even more freaked out as they all left the water as they were convinced it was a shark!
We also took a drive for several miles along the beach road as Darlene hadn't done that in Texas before.
The waves were ok but small. We were able to boogie board a bit and we picked up a couple of more boards for Sunday.
On Sunday we got up early and after breakfast and a short tour of Port A we headed to Mustang Island State Park. It was probably no later than 10 am when we got there and pretty much stayed there all day. We made some sand castles, ate some food, had the beach pretty much to ourselves. We had a couple of small jellyfish stings, maybe even just some seaweed. It was getting later in the day, we were going to start winding down sooner than later when Ryan freaked out and hopped out of the surf in absolute pain. He was in bad shape holding his foot up. We looked at there was quite a bit of blood and he said he walked on something and it stung him. The pain was getting worse so I ran him up to the ranger station and they said it was likely a stingray sting and to take him to ER so that was about 3:30.
Sure enough he had been stung by a sting ray, one of 1500-3000 such injuries per year. The doctor had treated 3 that day, all to "foreigners". Basically you have to immerse the wound in hot water, over 103F to neutralize or deactivate the toxins. We on the other hand had put ice on it! No wonder he was in so much pain.
I read a bit about stingrays today online, I didn't realize it was as painful as that.
Anyway yesterday was another 8 hour travel day home. Ryan is hobbling a bit as his wound is right on the bottom of his foot.
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