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We awoke to cold showers once again. I was drained from all our walking around the city the previous two days. Ann and Carol went shopping for a few hours. We knew that Carol needed to be at the airport by 4:10 for a flight an hour later. I just felt like vegetating. I watched television and surfed the internet.
In the afternoon Ann and Carol called and I high-tailed it over to Riverwalk for one final visit. We had lunch at a lousy restaurant and realized that we had to hurry back to the hotel. We didn't get checked out until almost 4:00. Carol had some Marriott certificates redeemable for a studio room (we had a two-bedroom suite) plus some Marriott dollars. The hotel gave us a $25 credit each night for the lack of hot water. Carol's certificates covered two of the nights. There was some good Sauder financing involved and we paid the final bill for the three night stay - six dollars.
We took Carol to the airport where United told her to take a Continental flight. By the time we switched terminals and airlines Carol boarded the plane immediately upon arriving at the gate.
Ann and I left and headed for Corpus Christi. The cell phone had digital coverage along the way so I logged onto the Internet and started researching hotels at South Padre Island. We were unsure about our final destination for the evening. We were within fifty miles of Corpus Christi, leaning toward spending the night on Padre Island, when I made the decision to drive another three hours to South Padre Island.
The drive to South Padre Island was boring. The roads were straight and there weren't many towns along the way. At home, we would never impulsively drive to Ocean City (three hours away) for the evening but that the equivalent of what we did here. I reasoned that we would probably never get this close to South Padre Island again and that we should take every opportunity.
South Padre Island looks a little like Ocean City, Maryland - except that there are wide-open spaces. It's as undeveloped as Ocean City was twenty-five or thirty years ago. There are a few big hotels but they are spaced out over a four-mile drive. We picked one because it kept advertising on billboards. It was very "dated" - it still uses ordinary house keys for the door locks - but overlooks the Gulf of Mexico from the ninth floor. It even has a balcony that overlooks the spa and pool.
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