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Yep. Kayla and I made our 6th annual pilgrimage to the land of surf, sand and sunburn: Port Aransas, TX!

This year almost didn’t happen. As I’ve mentioned before, Texas is “suffering” through the wettest summer in recent memory. It’s rained every week (it seems) and our rainfall totals are such that the area lakes have closed because of the high water levels. This isn’t supposed to happen.

As it turned out, the coast was getting record rainfall as well. Kayla and I were facing a 70% chance of rain in our beloved “Port A” and we considered a trek down to South Padre Island instead. She and I didn’t really want to have an additional 2 hour trip each way, so we decided to risk Mother Nature and stick with our traditional trip. We decided to take the truck instead of the Miata because we expected rain.

The weather was gorgeous. So gorgeous that the sun found it’s way through our 50 SPF sun block and gave us a little burn. Given that we’re from good central European stock, we don’t really “tan” all that well. Have you ever seen a German with a nice tan?

Here are some highlights:

• We couldn’t get in to the Sandcastle or the Best Western so we stayed at the Alister Square Inn…it kept us dry
• We tried a new restaurant called “Fins” at the Marina. We had dinner and a show on Friday as we sat on the deck and watched 3 boys fish from the pier
• Our favorite bakery has changed names (and presumably changed hands) again. What once was Beamans is now Zam’s Dangerous Kitchen
• We had Port A Pizzeria on the back of my pickup on the jetty on Friday night. The pizza was outstanding!
• It rained some of the day Saturday, but we were able to do some T-Shirt hunting at a couple of our favorite haunts
• What says “family” than father-daughter tattoos? Kayla and I each got henna tattoos on our way out of town.

I’ll post more pictures (in the Gallery) later.

We had a great time. We can’t wait till next year.

UPDATE:  New photos have been uploaded to the Gallery!