It’s A Vacation Slide Show! Wait, Where Are You Going?
January 17th, 2012
If the internet is good for anything, it’s for forcing your vacation photos upon the masses. Yay! Thanks, Al Gore! I’ve always wanted to see what the people I follow on Twitter look like in swimsuits! So…hairy!
Today I’m going to share with you my pictures from our trip to South Padre Island last weekend because, well, I really like them. (Who me? Self-indulgent? Never.) Even though we’ve lived in Texas for quite some time, we’ve never actually gone to South Padre before because of a) the Spring Break Idiots and b) the Jet-Ski Pirates and c) the fact that I couldn’t find it on a map. But that aside, we finally headed down there and it was really quite lovely.
Here’s the Gulf of Mexico from our hotel room:
(Note: All photos taken on my iPhone because I’m too lazy to carry our big camera and I like to play Words With Friends between shots.)
The beaches were surprisingly nice, although we found an inordinate amount of rubber gloves washed up on the shore. Which makes me wonder if the dolphins are giving each other medical exams when they’re not busy leaping playfully in the waves. (“OK, Flipper, now turn your head and cough. Hey, stop squeaking! Stop it! Uh-oh. Lump.”)
Here’s the bird sanctuary we visited:
And here’s one of its resident egrets who we watched choke down a fish faster than a Hollywood agent at a sushi bar:
Not for nothing, girlfriend, but you might need to slow your roll if people can see the outline of your food going down your throat.
Next, we all went on a boat. This was fun, but a little scary because the Captain’s name was “Darren.” And obviously Captains should be named something truly menacing like “Blackbeard” or “Knifeheart” or “Newt.” Also, he kind of looked like Danny Bonaduce and that concerned me because everyone knows Jet-Ski pirates have a legendary hatred of The Partridge Family. Trust me, I was glad I had the pen I stole from Denny’s in my pocket in case a high seas stabbing was necessary.
Some water shots:
Sam’s holding the puffy little guy that Danny Bonaduce caught in the boat’s net. I held him, too—for a heebie jeebie filled .5 seconds. Honestly, the dude looked ready to blow.
But this is my probably my favorite shot from the weekend:
No, I take that back. My favorite picture is actually from our hotel’s bar where we enjoyed a nightly microwave popcorn and cubed cheese Happy Hour with the rest of the senior citizen Snowbirds visiting from Minnesota and Wisconsin. (Ninety percent of the guests were named “Margie.”) Here’s the evening’s entertainment—and by “evening,” I mean 4 p.m. of course:
That’s Jack and Karrla from “Mixed Bag” who may or may not live in an RV. But they were truly fabulous, they sang sitting down and they happily took all of our requests—-”Hound Dog,” “Bad Bad Leroy Brown,” “Yellow Submarine,” “I Will Survive” and, as a special treat to me from my husband, “Copacabana.” (Karrla missed that performance because she was busy bussing tables, but Jack brought his own smooth Manilow magic to it.) If you’ve never seen a group of wintering farmers fast dance in knee braces to a spoken word version of “Jive Talkin’,” well, you’re truly missing out.
Anyway, my thanks to all of you for looking at my little vacation pictures. And if it goes well this time, maybe next time I’ll even include the hairy swimsuit ones.
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27 Comments
Add your own1. The Mommy Therapy | January 17th, 2012 at 12:07 pm
I don’t get it. I thought you had to had to do keg stands and make poor decisions while in South Padre, or “Padre” as I have always heard it called. This trip looks lovely. Your kids did at least one keg stand though, right? A shot?
Glad you had such a good trip…and welcome back!
2. Cait | January 17th, 2012 at 12:19 pm
Calle still insists it’s a goose. Possibly a duck. And let me tell you, 2 year olds know things. For instance they know that if they all whine in dissonant chorus, nanny Cait will sit on the floor and cry. This is the perfect time to ambush her and steal that granola bar she’s been trying to eat for the past 5 hours. They also know that playing the ABC song more than 15 times in a loop will prompt nanny Cait to let them look at her Instagram feed. This is when Calle will quite emphatically inform anyone in earshot that Wendi is wrong and it is in fact not an egret but a goose.
3. Nellie | January 17th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
“Not for nothing, girlfriend, but you might need to slow your roll if people can see the outline of your food going down your throat.”
That comment right there ^^ nearly created a spewed hot chocolate disaster! Thank you!
4. Marinka | January 17th, 2012 at 12:22 pm
I love Puffy! And look, he’s smiling! Smiley Puffy!
5. Hope | January 17th, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Rubber gloves..dolphins…medical exams for each other…
Thank you for the laughs!
6. Hope | January 17th, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Rubber gloves..dolphins…medical exams for each other…
Thank you for the laughs!
7. Nordic Girl | January 17th, 2012 at 12:52 pm
I should have had you say, “Hi”, to all my friends from Minnesota that left this freezer and headed south. Them, oh I can’t say the word. Glad you had a rockin good time at the bar though!
8. dusty earth mother | January 17th, 2012 at 3:02 pm
I’m dreaming of hearing Jack and Karria do “Leroy Brown”. And “Jive Talkin’”? Oh.my.sweet.Lord.
9. Elise | January 17th, 2012 at 7:02 pm
I kept seeing these beachy pics come through on your Instagram feed and was wondering if you had run away to Mexico or had “borrowed” a friend’s (and by a friend I mean Ansel Adams) vacation pics and passed them off as your own. Glad to see it was you having a good time on the Sunset Cruise while Sweatin’ to the Oldies.
10. marathonmom | January 17th, 2012 at 7:25 pm
I am glad I did not get one of those annoying emails from you that says “Hey I took a last minute trip to London and then these guys stole all my credit cards and I need you to wire money” because we know that is always a scam and I would have deleted it, but then, I would have read your post and then not been really sure = like, the 2012 version of the scam was the get the blogger to blog about it and I’d feel really bad and not know what to do until snopes was updated and whew- what a mess!
11. Jenn | January 17th, 2012 at 10:00 pm
I haven’t been there in almost ten years, but I don’t really have any fond memories of South Padre. The first time I went, my friend INSISTED that she knew the way, and we ended up on Mustang Island instead, which is hours away. That same trip I got sunburned so badly that the tops of my feet we were purple, and I was applying at least SPF 55 every 15mins…I am super pale to begin with, but still. I hate going over big long bridges, so the one you have to take to get on the island freaks me out. It’s only made worse when you have a car full of people telling you about how the last one collapsed. Also, I seem to remember it being big stoner town. That may be more in the summer, or they might have cleaned up their act, or moved on to bigger and better things that require the use of rubber gloves.
I’m glad y’all had fun.
12. Invader_Stu | January 18th, 2012 at 3:45 am
So that’s what happened to the blowfish from Finding Nemo after they escaped.
13. Becky Rice | January 18th, 2012 at 7:23 am
Is Mixed Bag available for other gigs?
14. Alexandra | January 18th, 2012 at 7:57 am
Jejejej (thought I”d spice your day up with some latina here today) to the cough cough oh oh lump.
Funny lady.
This post: so glad you didn’t install a sopa widget.
Some things should not be blacked out. PLUS am I the only one having a heart attack today when I click on a site and see all black?
Gah! These people are killing me.
15. Steph | January 18th, 2012 at 9:07 am
pretty pix. Mixed Bag look very sweet.
16. Jeffrey Trapnell | January 18th, 2012 at 9:45 am
My trip to So Padre looked a little different in 1982. But then again, you only get spring break once in your life. (Thank God for that built-in safety feature to maximizing life expectancy) Did you get to ride in the back of a cop car… that was the highlight of my trip… ok maybe not.
17. Diane | January 18th, 2012 at 10:45 am
We’re headed down there next summer for a family reunion trip. You have now set my expectations ridiculously high. Amazing photos, really.
18. julie gardner | January 18th, 2012 at 12:22 pm
My kids are named Jack and Karly.
So right now, I’m fairly stoked because I don’t have to worry about paying for college anymore.
Instead, I’ll point my children toward their true calling:
MIXED BAG 2067.
(55 years should toughen Karly’s hands up for for all the bussing, no?)
19. Nancy Davis Kho | January 18th, 2012 at 1:05 pm
“wintering farmers fast dance in knee braces to a spoken word version of ‘Jive Talkin’”
She’s a painter with words, Wendi is.
20. Former Austinite | January 18th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
True story. Many, many years ago my grandparents had the second house on the island. I spent every Spring Break until I was seventeen there and at least one or two weeks in the summer. I haven’t been there in probably ten years. I couldn’t believe how much it had changed then. Found my grandparents old house on google maps. The street is covered in houses! The lot across the street had been completely empty and there was only one house behind theirs. I remember being able to hear the ocean at night not some screaming idiots until all hours of the day and night. I do hope that you got to see the turtles. I used to do shows with the Turtle Lady as a kid. This is way more information than you wanted to know.
Glad you and the family had a great time!
21. Tara | January 18th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
I think Mixed Bag played at my friend Amy’s wedding in Brainerd, MN…
22. Ann | January 18th, 2012 at 8:50 pm
First I need to slow my roll, then go audition for Mixed Bag.
So awesome that Menudo-era Ricky Martin was glowing on top of your fishing boat.
23. the mama bird diaries | January 18th, 2012 at 10:06 pm
Where are the pirates? I thought you promised pirates.
24. Diane - It's All Good Until You Burn Dinner | January 19th, 2012 at 10:19 am
I think all of those people you hung out with at the bar are our summertime neighbors up here.
Love the pic of the boat with that sky.
And I hope you got Danny’s autograph with using that hot pen. Honestly, you should have brought him to the bar with you to perform with Jack and Karrla.
25. Kara | January 20th, 2012 at 11:14 am
O.M.G.! I was truly certain when I saw your tweet of the the man standing on the boat that the pic was photoshopped. I can’t believe for a split second in your vacation that scene really happened. For some reason I can’t help but think about Thor from Adeventures in Babysitting.
26. Rikki | January 20th, 2012 at 12:59 pm
I think you’re missing a connection (literally!). Rubber gloves = leaping dolphins…hello?
Also, the little fish obviously LOVES you. That is a flirtatious smirk if I ever saw one.
OK, it’s been awhile.
GREAT pix.
27. Erin I'm Gonna Kill Him | January 29th, 2012 at 11:59 am
Margies are so fun to hit da clubs with.
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