We headed out today to the Texas Sand Fest in Port Aransas, Texas. It is always a highly attended event and the traffic is just abominable. We stood in traffic forever to get into town. It was wall to wall vehicles. Then there is the parking! We have parked the last couple of times on Avenue G in a residential neighborhood close to the beach. We tried to park a little closer this time but to no avail. Unless you park on the beach, this was the best option. We did get our walking in, however, when we were within a couple miles of the event, one of the beach buggy drivers took pity on us and picked us up. She took us right to the tent where the bands were handed out for $10 each. The bands were good for two days.
I took a few pictures of the beach area on the way to the event.
The cars are parked in four aisles with driving to the North between two lines of cars, then two more lines of cars going South. The cars were lined up for what seemed like three miles!
You can see this area from Avenue G where we came in.
Then we bought our wrist bands and went in to see how the sculptures were doing. They have until tomorrow at noon to finish their sand sculptures.
The first sand sculptures that you see are advertising structures with names of businesses on them. For a price, you can stand on top of the one with the flags and have your picture taken.
Our first stop was to one of the Corn Dog vendors - the one with the giant corn dogs as we were starving after being in traffic forever.
Here is Lee with what is left of his corn dog. It went fast!
After we had something to eat, we were ready to look at how the artists were doing.
"Flaming Hot Female" by Amanda Bolduc who was born and raised in Maine. She has competed in other contests, mostly in Florida.
"Last Stand" by Albert Lucio Sr. who is from Corpus Christi.
"Casa Mangia" by Marc Mangia from Columbus, Ohio.
"Putting the Greatest Into Perspective" by Bruce Peck of Bradenton, Florida
"Block Buster" by Dale Andrews from Canada.
Then we wandered by all the sand sculptures that were done by the talent brought in from across the USA and Canada.
"The Seraphim" by Delayne Corbett from Vancouver, British Columbia.
Bruce Phillips did this sculpture.
"Contentment" By Todd Pangborn from Jamestown, NY.
By Charles Beaulieu of Kingston, Washington
By Jon Woodworth of Leander, Texas and Heather Woodworth of Leander, Texas
"Sharing a Heart" by Abe Waterman from Prince Edward Island, Canada and Moran Rudluff of Santa Cruz, California,
Castle by Christy McDonald Atkinson of Franklin, Texas and the Amazing Walter McDonald from South Padre Island and we believe Christy's father. At 76, he may be the oldest sand sculptor in captivity.
By Emerson Schreiner of Grand Rapids, Michigan and South Padre Island and Lucinda Wierenga of South Padre Island, Texas.
By Brian Turnbough of Mokena, Illinois
"Symplocarpus Foetidus" By Carl Jara from Lyndhurst, Ohio
By Ted Siebert of Chicago, Illinois
By Ky and Jeff Terrell (father and son) of Austin and Round Rock, Texas
Trampled sand
My favorite picture of the day was this little guy walking with his Dad around the shopping area!! I love it that the sun just highlighted his little behind!
There were lots of places to part with your money!!
When we left the Sand Festival, we were lucky to get on the last free beach buggies ride of the night and since we were the last ones on, he took us all the way to Avenue G and so we didn't have to walk too far to the car. That was great because we had sloughed through a lot of sand!
The traffic was still as nuts as it was before so it took forever to get where we were going. We wanted to eat at the Island Cafe but we weren't sure if it had been destroyed by Hurricane Harvey. We were happy to see that it was still there although it was a brand new building now. Their place had been under four feet of water and was totally destroyed. Their new place is a lot nicer and the food is still the same and very good.
We found out the next day that the Dairy Queen had been totally replaced also in its original place, however, several buildings in that area including a lot of stores, were still shells of buildings. Don't know if they will be torn down or what the hold up is.
We each had the "All you can eat fish dinner." This was it and it included a salad bar. I managed to eat three pieces of my fish and I think Lee managed four. You could get more but I'm not sure how you would walk out of there if you did! The fish was free grouper and it was delish!
Today the Sand Sculpting was still in progress and most of the artists weren't done yet so we'll be back in the afternoon tomorrow to see the finished products.
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