THE SCENIC ROUTE
On Thin Islands
WHEN THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED ISN’T ACTUALLY A ROAD ... BUT A BEACH Story and photos by James Fox-Smith A particularly delightful feature of the Gulf ’s barrier island beaches is the invitation to drive your vehicle right onto the sand.
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erious ink has been spilled extolling the virtues of the road less traveled. It’s a romantic notion: why not quit the superhighway in favor of the back road, the country lane—secure in the knowledge that even if we arrive at our destination a little later, we stand to be enriched by the diversion? In reality though, when departing for that long-anticipated getaway, how many of us overscheduled, time-poor individuals actually end up opting for the slow road? Not many. Instead, brainwashed by a lifetime’s propaganda singing the praises of speed and efficiency, we feel compelled to zero in on our destination, forgetting that by definition, the process of “getting away” really begins the moment we turn out of the driveway. “Life is a journey, not a destination,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson—words memorable enough to be reproduced on everything from tattoos to tea towels, to that souvenir travel mug you’re in danger of buying at one of the hundreds of Buc-ee’s or Pilot Travel Centers that line America’s interstate network … if you don’t heed Ralph’s advice by getting off the main drag and going in search of more interesting souvenirs. With this in mind, one February morning I set out from St. Francisville in pre-dawn darkness—determined to trade the juggernaut efficiency of I-10 for a slower, more scenic route to my destination: Mustang Island on the Texas Gulf Coast. You don’t hear much about Mustang Island, but that’s okay with the few thousand people who call it home. Eighteen miles long and not much more than a mile wide, Mustang tends to be overshadowed by its larger, flashier neighbor to the south, Padre Island—which
at 113 miles in length, stretches almost to the Mexico border and boasts the status of one of the most popular (and wild) spring break destinations in the country. Mustang Island offers a quieter, less commercialized Texas Gulf Coast beach experience—one renowned for the birdwatching, fishing, swimming, surfing, and wide-open beaches that attract folks from across Texas and surrounding states.
Getting There
From St. Francisville to Mustang Island takes about eight-and-a-half hours by the fastest route, but since I was determined to see as little of I-10 as possible, I crossed the Mississippi River at the Audubon Bridge, winding my way through Maringouin and Rosedale, along sinuous roads like LA 414 and 413 that shadow the bayous, through cypress trees and cane fields and past crumbling Catholic cemeteries wreathed in early morning mist, towards Grosse Tete and the unavoidable stretch of I-10 beyond. As the sun rose, I was somewhere in Cameron Parish, sailing between rice paddies where snowy egrets stalked crawfish. By 7 am I was through Lake Charles, its chemical flares adding who-knowswhat to a rose-colored sunrise. If you measure a road trip by the number of sights that depart from day-to-day experience, it’s when I turned off of I-10 at Winnie onto TX-124 that things started to get interesting. Right away the national brands were replaced by places with names like Tony’s BBQ & Steakhouse, and the Sea Pony Bait & Tackle Shack. Then those faded away too, and all around was coastal plain—dotted with pumpjacks and longhorn
cattle, the sun low in the sky, on a two-lane road following a line of utility poles towards the still-invisible Gulf. At 257 miles from home I passed the Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge. At mile 263 a tall bridge rewarded with a birds-eye view of pushboats chugging west to east along the Intracoastal Waterway, and took me over the wetlands southward for a first glimpse of the shining Gulf beyond. Then came a little coastal chenier town named High Island, and it was a hard right onto TX Hwy-87 and the Bolivar Peninsula towards Galveston. If you haven’t done it, driving along the Bolivar Peninsula offers a little slice of the old Texas coast worth an hour of your valuable time. For twenty miles you skim along a two-lane strip of blacktop separated from glittering Gulf waves by a slender strip of shell-strewn beach. Everything is built on stilts, painted in pastels, with a cheerful, independent, make-do vibe that doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously. Driving past bait shacks, stilt houses leaning out over the water, scrubby coastal live oaks festooned with egrets, and a rusty Highway 87 sign with a brown pelican perched on top makes you appreciate the strange beauty of this network of peninsulas and barrier islands strung like a necklace along the Louisiana/Mississippi/Texas coasts. Sure, they’re scruffy and beat up and kind of out-of-the-way. But as a unique, land-that-time-forgot environment and a first line of defense against the increasingly-powerful storms that roll in from the Gulf, they’re a treasure that we would do well to respect and understand. And preserve, because we’ll miss them when they’re gone. At the end of Bolivar, Tx-87 dead-ends into the boarding lanes for the Port Bolivar-Galveston Ferry. // A P R 2 2
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