The Best Things to Do in Port Aransas

This is the reason the town exists as a destination. The city's stretch of Gulf front runs from marker 0 to marker 62, and you can drive onto it and park with a $12 permit sticker that is good from January 1 to December 31 of the year you buy it. The sticker is sold at City Hall, the chamber office, the Family Center IGA and from vendors on the sand itself, which matters because almost nobody realises they need one until they are already on the beach.

Two stretches are free with no sticker at all, between the jetties and Horace Caldwell Pier at the north end, and between markers 52 and 58 at the south end. Elsewhere, park on the roadside of the bollards only. Vehicles have to sit perpendicular to the water, the speed limit on the sand is 15 miles an hour, and driving in the dunes is flatly prohibited year round.

Two boardwalks totalling 1,225 feet run out over the wetland, with two shaded observation platforms, benches and two fixed spotting scopes. Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine named it one of the top ten boardwalks in Texas in 2006, and it is still the single best place in town to see water birds at close range without a boat or a long walk. It costs nothing and it never closes during daylight.

The free Birding on the Boardwalk programme runs Wednesday mornings from 9 to 11, led by experienced guides, and binoculars are available on loan if you turn up without any. The site now connects to the Charlie's Pasture south trail, which carries on another 1.25 miles over salt marsh and prairie, so you can treat this as either a twenty minute stop or the start of a two hour walk.

The University of Texas has run a marine lab on this site for decades, and the public face of it is this visitor centre, rebuilt after Hurricane Harvey wrecked the old one in 2017 and funded with help from NOAA and donors Bobby and Sherri Patton. Eight large aquaria hold local Gulf and estuary species, the Estuary Explorium side is hands on, and all of it is free.

Kent Ullberg's bronze Interdependency stands at the entrance, a ten foot tarpon built out of more than fifty other marine animals, and it is worth a minute on its own. Outside, the Wetlands Education Center walk and the Water Wise Wildlife Garden of native coastal plants are open to anyone. It is the best rainy day answer in Port Aransas and it is also the best free one.

The preserve protects roughly 1,280 acres of upland prairie, tidal flat and salt marsh, one of very few large undeveloped tracts left on this part of the coast. The Salt Island Trail is the one to walk, 2.2 miles round trip alternating between boardwalk and decomposed granite, ending at a two storey observation tower that puts you above the marsh. It connects through to the birding centre, so the two sites can be done as one loop.

Shorter options exist if you have children or heat to deal with. Clay's Hill Trail is a quarter mile paved and ADA accessible, with viewing scopes, and the Community Park Trail is a flat mile. There are picnic tables, pavilions and portable toilets at the Charlie's Pasture end, benches and shade structures along the way, and no admission charge anywhere on it.

Nueces County runs this 167 acre park on the island's northern tip, and the pier is the draw. It is 1,240 feet of lighted concrete reaching into the Gulf, accessible around the clock, and a new 2,500 square foot observation deck has opened on it for people who want the view without a rod. Entry is $3 a person, poles are $4 each to a maximum of three, children under 12 are free, and seniors and active military pay $1 and $1.

The rest of the park is the practical half. There are 64 RV sites with full hookups on 50, 30 and 20 amp service, plus picnic areas and the rebuilt headquarters building. Note the one rule people get wrong, which is that camping on the sand is not allowed inside the county park, only on the city side of the line.

Drive south out of Port Aransas on 361 and the condos stop. The state park holds more than five miles of coastline with nothing built on it, which is the part of Mustang Island that still looks the way the whole island did. Day use is $7 for adults and free for children 12 and under. It carries a Corpus Christi mailing address, so be clear that it is a short drive from town rather than in it.

Camping is the reason most people book it. There are 48 sites with water and electric about a third of a mile back from the water, with restrooms and hot showers, plus 50 drive up primitive sites on the sand itself and portable toilets spread along two miles of beach. A 20 mile paddling trail in three segments runs the bay side through shallow fishing water, which is the quietest way to see the island.

Port Aransas calls itself the fishing capital of Texas and this is the operation that makes that claim accessible to somebody who has never held a saltwater rod. The boats are large catamarans running as walk on party trips rather than private charters, and bait, tackle, rods and reels are included, with no fishing licence required on the deep sea trips.

The useful range is the 6 hour and 9 hour offshore trips, which target king fish, Spanish mackerel, ling, spadefish, triggerfish and red snapper when the federal season is open. Longer runs go out to tuna water. If none of that appeals, the same dock sells scenic, sunset and dolphin watch cruises that take about an hour and a half and need no equipment at all.

Fifty acres on a peninsula pushing into the Corpus Christi ship channel, which means you sit and watch tankers, shrimp boats and dolphins pass at close range without paying for a tour. It is next to the ferry landing, so it doubles as the best place to kill time if the ferry queue is long, and the free B-Bus stops here.

Turtle Cove is the new part, a rubber surfaced playground built around a custom lighthouse structure, and it is genuinely the best play equipment on the island. Around it are fishing spots, athletic fields, lawn games, pavilions and restrooms. Nothing here costs money.

Two sites, one organisation, both run by the Port Aransas Preservation and Historical Association. The museum on North Alister is a small house telling the island's story, which is mostly tarpon fishing, hurricanes and the families who stayed through both. It takes about forty five minutes and leaves you understanding why the town looks the way it does.

Farley Boat Works at 716 West Avenue C is the better half. Fred Farley, a craftsman from Birmingham, Alabama, started Farley and Son, Boat Builders here in 1915, and the family built wooden tarpon boats for three generations until 1975. Franklin Roosevelt fished from one in 1937 with Barney Farley as his guide. The shop has been revived as a working operation where you can watch hulls built by hand and enrol to build your own. The third site, the Chapel on the Dunes, opens for tours on the third Saturday of the month by reservation.

A small non profit gallery with a year round exhibition across oil, acrylic, pottery, jewellery and glass, plus a special show that changes monthly. There is no entrance fee. The shop sells work by the same local artists, which makes it the one place in town to buy a souvenir that was not shipped in by the pallet.

It also teaches. The education programme runs classes and workshops for adults and children, and the First Friday opening reception each month brings live music, wine and demonstrations by the artists between 5.30 and 7.30. That evening is the busiest and the most interesting time to be in the building.