The Day of the Dead on South Padre Island

The further south we go the more palm trees appear and we realize that we are getting into a more tropical area, in fact we are the same latitude as Tampa Bay, Florida. The road is straight and we make no turns all the way from San Antonio.

Gracie is on her last nerve, the creaking of the motor home over the Texas roads has got to her and she will not leave our sides, Timmy is lounging on the couches in the back, no worries.

Six hours later we reach our destination, in the 80's a manager at KW told me I had to go here that it was the most wonderful place, it took me this long to get here, but we are here

This is our first look at SPI, as they call it, where is my little cute island? It looks like

Miami Beach!

You have to go over this 2 1/2 mile causeway bridge, largest bridge in Texas, and you also have to look out for the pelicans, the brown pelicans are endangered

As we approach it, my cute little island keeps getting bigger and bigger

Our KOA home is right off the bridge to the right,very convenient

The doggies even get their little tropical paradise

This is right in front of our campground, doesn't seem to be too deep

But we have to go explore the island, I asked the first person I see, "What happened to this Island, it looks like it was on steroids", I won't say who he was, but he told me that less than 2,000 people live on the island full time, that what I was looking at was Mexican Drug Cartel money, it all happened so that they could launder their money, but, he said, they don't bother us, we don't bother them, so OK.....

Huge homes all over the one end of the island, but they are all empty, well, no one is there, in fact there aren't many people on the island at all we notice

We are in a tropical place, which I would think would be in season in the winter, but there is hardly anybody here, both Cindy and I thought it seemed like something out of a Stephen King book, where did all the people go?????

And they even get an extra day in February!

These hotels are right on the beach, empty, you could get a room for $25.99, we can't figure out why, it's 80 degrees, cold everywhere else, where are the people? Oh, Yeah, they take the Day of the Dead very seriously around here, many Hispanics, what with being so close to the border, lots of parties

The sun sets and we are going to have to find out the answers to our questions another day. Wanted to make sure and say hi to Phil and Sandy, they are looking at our blog all the way from Australia, thanks for going along with us!