Field Report No. 18 · Family trip
Port Aransas Texas, USA
Cheap, easy, and gloriously unpretentious. Golf carts and country music, drive-on-the-beach mornings, a boogie board, and a day at Cinnamon Shore when you want the polished version.
Field Report
No. 18
Family trip
Port Aransas Texas, USA
Worth knowing about.
- Coordinates
- 27.8339° N, 97.0611° W
- Traveled
- Summer 2022
- Kid-readiness
- About as easy as a beach gets. You drive the golf cart right onto the sand, so basecamp and everything in it is ten feet from the water. Add a horseback ride on the beach and a pirate cruise and the kids are set.
- Where we stayed
- A cheap condo at Island Retreat, steps from the sand. We did not stay in the nicest place, and that's the whole spirit of the trip: location and a golf cart out front, nothing else.
- The non-negotiable
- Rent a golf cart and drive out onto the beach. The whole town runs on carts, you park right on the sand, and that combination is the entire reason Port A works with kids.
- What we'd skip
- Expecting turquoise. This is a warm, gentle, brown-water Gulf beach, not a postcard-blue one. Come for the ease, not the water color, and you'll love it.
- Best season
- Late spring or early summer, before the deep-August heat and the seaweed season settle in. We went in June.
- Points & hacking
- A drive-to weekend from Fort Worth, not a flight: a tank of gas, a short ferry to the island, and a golf cart (about $420 for the long weekend). No points, no airport.
27.8339° N, 97.0611° W
Port Aransas is a golf-cart-and-beach town, and once you lean into that, the whole trip clicks. This is not the fancy one. It’s the cheap, easy, gloriously unpretentious one. The town runs on golf carts blasting country music, and if you’ve got any inner Texan in you at all, it’s a blast to tap into. We came for the simple stuff: drive onto the sand, play in the waves, boogie board, do a little fishing, eat at some little places, repeat. That’s the whole vacation, and it’s a good one.
Rent the golf cart and drive it onto the sand. The cart is basecamp, the water’s ten feet away, and the whole town’s cruising by on carts with the radio up. Lean into your inner Texan and it’s a blast.
You take the coast without the airport: a drive from Fort Worth, a short ferry across to the island. We rented our cart from Silver Sands (about $420 for the long weekend) and stayed at a cheap condo at Island Retreat steps from the sand. Get out early while the light’s soft and the Gulf is calm, set up out of the back of the cart, and turn the girls loose on the shorebreak. One dumb-but-real tip: bring bungee straps for the cart. Our beach chairs kept bouncing off on the drive over the sand. We lost four of them before we wised up.
Beyond the beach
If you want more than sand, the town hands it to you. Ride Horses on the Beach at the water’s edge, book a sandcastle lesson and actually learn to build one, or take the Red Dragon Pirate Cruise, corny in exactly the way a 4- and 6-year-old want. The one we’d most want to do again: the shuttle from Fisherman’s Wharf over to San Jose (St. Joe’s) Island, a private, undeveloped barrier island where it’s just you, the shells, and the birds.
And when you want the polished version for an afternoon, drive up to Cinnamon Shore on Mustang Island. It’s a New-Urbanist beach town (grassy commons, pastel cottages, live music and something going on outside) that feels like you teleported to 30A. The whiplash between that and the golf-cart-and-country-music side of the island is genuinely funny, and worth a stop for the contrast alone. The girls ran the lawns while we got a coffee; it’s an easy, pretty half-day.
Where to eat
Two water-view dinners carry it. La Playa is seafood-meets-Mexican with the best margaritas on the island and a guacamole worth ordering. Just know there’s always a wait, so go at 5pm or after 8. Virginia’s on the Water is the loud, fun one for the sunset and a platter of fried shrimp. For a low-key day, Beach & Station Grill does burgers and fish the whole family agrees on, and Coffee Waves has gelato after dinner. One heads-up: Shells has great pasta but a tiny room, so it’s not the move with little kids.
The honest read
This isn’t a destination. It’s a reset. A close-to-home Texas beach weekend you can pull off on a Friday without a passport or a plan. If you’re set on turquoise water and a resort, this isn’t that. But rent the cart, drive onto the sand, eat shrimp at sunset, and let the kids run themselves salt-crusted and happy, and three slow days here are exactly the kind you don’t get back.
