Texas Sandfest 2011: Day 1

Friday after work we headed to Corpus Christi to spend the weekend on the beach. We spent the better part of Saturday at Texas Sandfest 2011.

I stumbled across mention of it somewhere and thought it looked like fun. The boys LOVE the beach and I couldn't believe some of the amazingly detailed sand sculptures I had seen pictures of. So we thought it would be a lot of fun.

Saturday morning after breakfast and some play time at McDonalds we made our way over to Port Aransas and drove down the beach. Cars were already bumper to bumper and parking was non-existent and really far from the event area so we opted to try the Park and Ride from Sharkey's instead.

It actually worked out pretty well. After a short wait in line we got to ride on a yellow school bus down the beach and it dropped us relatively close to the event area (at marker 6 with the actual event around 9/10).

Once we got to the beach the boys were off and running.

We wandered through the market area with various shops selling a little bit of everything from art to clothes. About the half-way mark we found the sponsor plaques.

I can't even imagine the amount of time that must have gone into making it. We were really impressed with all the critters that were interspersed with the sponsor logos including a giant octopus on the end.

After taking a dozen or so pictures we wandered through the rest of the market including the food court areas and found the kids sculpting area.

And just past it the adult amatures. There were quite a few folks making good progress already.

It was interesting to watch them work and see how the sculptures came to life.

The ticket line to get in to see the master sculpters was ridiculously long so we decided to let the boys play on the beach and grab some lunch.

The boys had a great time. Though note to self: get another dump truck. They both wanted to play with it instead of the loader.

The boys' imaginations are really coming along. They make up all kinds of pretend things amsuing themselves and one another.

Connor for example served me the buckets claiming they were hotdogs. When I asked where the ketchup was he added some more sand and packed it down and said there it is!

After lunch we packed up our sand toys, got tickets for the master area and went inside to get a closer look.

There were about 10 different projects underway.

I was amazed by how detailed and life-like some of them were.

This was definately one of my favorites.  I couldn't help but speculate what the other block would turn out to be.  And I couldn't have been more wrong.... :)

The boys absolutely LOVED the fish.  It was by far their favorite.

By the time we finished our tour it was close to 4pm so we decided to head back to the park and ride and see if we couldn't get the boys to take a nap.

 

All the running around had definately tuckered them out.