| Padre Island National Seashore Travel Planner | |
Things to Do:
Padre Island National Seashore offers opportunities for a variety of activities depending on your personal interests. The best place to begin your visit is at the Malaquite Beach complex, which serves as the center of visitor services for the National Seashore. The complex includes a visitor center, observation deck, groceries and gift shop, restrooms, rinse-off showers, and changing rooms. The visitor center also includes a variety of information on what to see and do at the park, including rangers who can answer questions and help you to plan your visit. Schedules of special activities, including beach walks and evening programs, are posted.
One way to enjoy the park is to drive along the scenic roads and sandy beaches. All vehicles can travel on the 8.5-mile paved park entrance road, North Beach, and the first 5 miles of South Beach. Four-wheel-drive vehicles can continue down from South Beach another 55 miles to Mansfield Channel. Another way to explore the island is by hiking. The Grasslands Nature Trail, a 0.75-mile loop trail, winds through a grasslands and dunes area.
Major attractions at Padre Island include fishing, camping, and windsurfing. The Bird Island Basin area on the Laguna Madre is one of the top spots in the nation for windsurfing because of its steady wind, warm water, and shallow depths. Worldwinds Windsurfing is an authorized concessionaire, offering windsurfing rentals, lessons and sales. For further information, call 361-949-7472.
Swimming and sunbathing are most enjoyable in front of the Visitors Center, where food, drink, picnic tables, and toilet facilities are available. Fishing is best enjoyed on South Beach or farther south in the four-wheel drive area at Big and Little Shell Beaches or at the Mansfield Channel.Fishing is an all-season sport on the island. Surf fishermen commonly catch redfish, speckled sea trout, black drum, and whiting in the Gulf, while Laguna Madre fishermen pull in sheepshead, croaker, and flounder. A Texas state fishing license with a saltwater stamp is required.
The national seashore offers excellent opportunities for birdwatching. Situated along the Central Flyway, Padre Island is a globally important area for over 350 migratory, overwintering, and resident bird species, including white pelicans gulls, terns, great blue herons, and great and snowy egrets, and many other species. A program to increase sea-turtle nesting at Padre Island National Seashore offers the public the opportunity to attend hatchling releases or to participate in locating nests as volunteers. For information on release dates and times call the Hatchling Hotline at (361) 949-7163. For information on volunteering for the sea turtle program call (361) 949-8173 extension 228.
The National Seashore's remote location also makes it one of the few places where the public can find quiet and solitude relatively near a major urban area and where one can observe the night sky with minimal interference from light pollution.
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