“GROWTH IS PAINFUL. CHANGE IS PAINFUL. BUT NOTHING IS AS PAINFUL AS STAYING STUCK SOMEWHERE YOU DON’T BELONG.” yourtango.com
“Greetings From Austin Capitol of Texas” mural located in downtown Austin, Texas.
WHY LEAVE AUSTIN & MOVE TO THE TEXAS COAST?
“WHY?!…”, he asked, she asked, they all asked in disbelief “…are you moving from the number one city in the US, to the Texas coast?” As it turns out, Numero Uno is also unofficially known as the Allergy Capital of the World. As a result of living there, I’ve spent more of the last six years being sick than enjoying the amenities of life in the Capital City.
Before I moved to Austin, I only had one maintenance prescription. Now, I have a pulmonologist, an allergist and six daily prescriptions, and that’s just for the asthma and allergies that I developed since living there!
The last time I saw my pulmonologist, I asked him if he ever prescribed moving as a treatment plan to any of his patients. He said yes and I asked him if I was at all close to receiving that same advice. His answer was a resounding yes. It was now clear that I had two choices: 1) Live in Austin and spend half of each year very sick and the other half marginally sick or, 2) move. To me, it was a no-brainer. I had to move and if I had to move but still live in-state, then I was moving to the Texas coast.
THE BIG MOVE
With the logistics and expense involved, this would be a big move and it had to be thought out carefully to avoid making a costly wrong decision. My work involves research and analysis so I applied those skills to determine the destination of what I called the Big Move.
When you start thinking about living somewhere, as opposed to weekending or vacationing there, your priorities change. Things like groceries, airports, shopping, churches and schools become more important than good hotels, restaurants and plenty of touristy things to see or do. I call these things that make up a person’s core day-to-day life experience, the Livability Factors. The items on my LF list are not items that every other person would need or even any other person would need. Rather, they are the things that I need to live my best life.
I created a Livability Factors List which grew to 18 must-have items. I won’t list them all here but heading up the list is, obviously, a location away from my specific allergens, close to medical care and healthy, whole foods and supplements, as well as a cathedral, access to beaches, an international airport, access to outdoor recreation and interesting regional history.
WHICH AREA OF THE TEXAS COAST?
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND?
Before the Big Move, I had thought that if I ever moved from Austin to anywhere else on the Texas coast, it would be to South Padre Island. As a Louisiana native who had never seen the Texas coast, Florida was my benchmark of US coastal beauty. The first time I crossed the Queen Isabella Causeway from Port Isabel to South Padre Island, I gasped with delight at how much it reminded me of parts of the Sunshine State. Now, I appreciate the Texas coast for its own inherent beauty.
The Queen Isabella Causeway crosses the Laguna Madre Bay from Port Isabel over onto South Padre Island.
As I now considered the LFs, I sadly realized that several things prevented me from moving to SPI. First of all, I needed a wider variety of healthy food options than SPI’s adorable Blue Marlin Supermarket offered.
Then, there’s shopping and airports. Brownsville and Harlingen, the largest area communities, are about 45 miles away from SPI. The next closest metro area is San Antonio, at roughly 4.5 hours away. Those distances are all too far to drive every time I need to shop or fly.
Another big LF for me is a Roman Catholic cathedral. I love the art, the history, the art and architecture of a cathedral. I love the music…organs, choirs, orchestras and special performances, the bells and the incense. All of these deepen my spiritual experience. SPI’s sister community, Port Isabel, has Our Lady Star of the Sea but it’s not a cathedral.
My Polaroid dreams of living in a beach-front condo on SPI, enjoying daily beach strolls and riding an aqua, vintage-style, wicker basketed bicycle to the Blue Marlin for groceries faded into Technicolor reality. Sadly, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to live on SPI. But with no time to spare before Fall’s Cedar Fever hit, I got back to the Big Move.
GALVESTON?
The Pleasure Pier at Galveston, Texas overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.
“What about Galveston?”, I thought. I checked it against my Livability Factors list. Coastal, check. Cathedral, check. Nature, check. But when I got to whole foods and supplements, airport and shopping, my heart sank. There were grocery stores with vitamins and supplements but not the specialty ones I was used to. Yes, I could drive to Houston for major shopping and the airport. But did I really want to? The distance wasn’t the only problem. There was also the infamous Houston traffic, supposedly worse than Austin’s.
Don’t laugh, but I didn’t even realize until I moved to Austin that I am a small-town girl at heart. I moved there from Shreveport, Louisiana, the largest town I had ever lived in. To me, it was the BIG CITY but it was easy to navigate.
Facing Austin’s size, travel time for even short distances and its constant traffic jams was a shocker. There seemed to be only two travel patterns. It was a crawling parking lot, taking up to two hours to drive just 17 miles from South to North Austin. Or, it was a race track with cars weaving out of one lane and muscling into another lane with just inches of spare space. The drivers’ impatient honking at people who didn’t know exactly how to get where they were going (people like me) rattled my nerves.
Although I eventually got better at driving in Austin, I never got comfortable driving there. I now imagined having to drive to Houston from Galveston, on a regular basis for specialty shopping and major airport access. Immediately, a heart-pounding, cold-sweating, white-knuckled-death grip-on-the-steering-wheel physical reaction overcame me. Crestfallen, I struck Galveston off the list.
IF NOT SPI OR GALVESTON, THEN WHERE?
With SPI and Galveston stricken off as contenders for the Big Move, where else could I go? Then I remembered a place I had visited a couple of years earlier. I had been invited along on an overnight business trip that turned into a week-long vacation for me. Of course, this trip was the one time I packed appropriately for the trip’s duration (one night). The first night turned into another and then another and on into a week. After that, I swore I would forever stop trying to change my nature because if I had packed as I normally did, I would have had enough clothes and toiletries for a month. The good thing about that overnighter-turned-week-long trip was that I used the long lapses of free time I had to explore the area.
PADRE ISLAND?
I looked at this location with fresh eyes and was surprised to find that it met all of my requirements. So, where is this mystery place, you may ask? Its name is Padre Island. It’s the longest undeveloped barrier island in the world and it sits in the Gulf of Mexico. You’ll often hear it referred to as Corpus Christi, or Corpus, for short because it’s incorporated into the Corpus Christi metro area. And, islanders have a Corpus Christi address. Locals simply call it “The Island”. There’s even a bronze marlin statue welcoming you to “The Island” as you cross over the Laguna Madre on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Causeway from Corpus Christi.
A marlin statue and “The Island” sign welcome visitors as they cross the Laguna Madre on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Causeway from Corpus Christi.
My excitement about the community escalated even more when word came of possible future work opportunities in the area. The idea of being on the ground ready to go should the projects materialize seemed to validate that I was making the right move.
Someone recently shared this article from Texas Monthly with me. In it, the author, R.G. Ratcliffe, states that “Vasey (Iain Vasey, president of the Corpus Christi Regional Economic Development Corporation, whom the author says is from my home state of Louisiana, and who was hired to ‘help guide the city through its current boom’) predicts that the new port developments (in Corpus Christi) will produce between 10,000 and 20,000 high-paying industrial jobs, with a ripple effect of another 30,000 or so jobs in retail and service sectors.” That’s a sizable growth, about the same number of jobs as people who live on the island, and hopefully, translates into more check-marks for the community and not minuses.
HERE’S WHY
Here’s why I chose this area for the Big Move: Allergen-free, climate, beaches, blue water, HEB (a Texas grocery company that carries fresh, organic, whole foods and supplements), Vitamin Shoppe, Sprouts, Padre Island National Seashore, Corpus Christi Cathedral, and Corpus Christi International Airport.
There’s Mustang Island State Park, Texas State Aquarium, South Texas Botanical Gardens & Nature Center, Barefoot Mardi Gras Festival (the only thing better than a Mardi Gras Festival is a barefoot beach Mardi Gras Festival), Buc Days Festival (I love anything “pirate”), La Palmera Mall and The Shops at La Palmera (I’m not a big shopper but when I need something, I don’t want to have to drive very far to find it).
Also on the island is St. Andrews By the Sea Catholic Church, a popular wedding venue; the Animal Hospital of Padre Island; Isle Mail & More, a full-service mail and shipping store and a new, independent grocery is “coming soon”. The residents seem to be a mix of all ages and from different part of the country. And as a bonus, everyone I’ve met so far seems friendly! Everything I need for daily life is on the island or OTB (over the bridge), as the islanders say, in Corpus Christi.
South Padre Island is now only 2.5 – 3 hours away. Galveston and Austin are each about 4 hours away. San Antonio is 2 hours away and Houston is barely over 3 hours away. The proximity of Corpus to those destinations is perfect for weekend getaways and one more reason that makes Corpus the right choice for me right now, The Island my new home and this, my new playground…
The afterglow of another beautiful day in paradise.
NOW
There’s lots to discover and share about The Island, Corpus Christi and the surrounding area. I hope to do that over time. I also plan to write more posts about my still-beloved South Padre Island and treasured Galveston. And, I will continue to work on my Austin Bucket List, but not in allergy season. I’ll share those experiences here, too.
Meanwhile, to learn more about the Texas coast, start with these links:
CORPUS CHRISTI, MUSTANG ISLAND & PADRE ISLAND LINKS
Corpus Christi, Mustang and Padre Islands See and Do
Padre Island National Seashore
Padre Island, Corpus Christi & Area Photo Gallery
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND LINKS
South Padre Island Visitors Center
SPI Sandcastle Days: Fall’s Fun Fest at the Beach!
SPI Vacay HQ: Hilton Garden Inn
Breeze Traveler’s Parrot Eyes Watersports Review on Trip Advisor
South Padre Island Photo Gallery
GALVESTON ISLAND LINKS
Galveston Island Photo Gallery
