Lively Beach in Corpus Christi, Texas is Lovely

For my birthday in January 2021, my husband and I took a trip to a new place that turned out to be fantastic! It was the Lively Beach resort condominiums on Mustang Island. If you are not familiar with Texas, I’ll start by saying it took about 7 hours to drive there from North Texas (Dallas area) all the way south to the coast of Corpus Christi.

Lively Beach is located on a peninsula named Mustang Island. It’s close to Padre Island which is a very popular location for spring break. Whereas Padre Island gets super crowded and congested during peak visit times of the year, we found going in January to the Mustang Island area was very uncrowded.

The weather was nice during the day in the mid 70s. It got windy but there was no rain. At night it was quiet and peaceful.

The Lively Beach resort was a little more than halfway finished it when we visited bringing our 60-lb Siberian Husky dog with us. It was her first time visiting the ocean. We got some great photos and videos of her enjoying the surf.

The dog-friendly condos are located only on the first floor. There are three floors to each building. The larger units are on top with fantastic views of the ocean. We were happy with our studio as it comes with a complete kitchen, storage space, full-size bathroom, sofa and tables, desk, TV and a large window that opens up to the property.

There’s a bridge that connects the mainland to Mustang Island. On the mainland are grocery stores and shops of all kinds. We stocked up at a market so we could cook in our unit. We also made it a point to drive around the peninsula, going as far as the ferry to Port Aransas. Along the drive, we found another condo resort place that also has its own village of restaurants and shops. We stopped one night to eat dinner at an Italian restaurant. It was very nice.

There were only a couple of other rented units and once they left, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. There’s a huge swimming pool. Adjacent to it is fire ring pits with oversized Adirondack chairs. We roasted marshmallows one night under the starry sky.

One windy day, we watched many windsurfers take to the ocean displaying acrobatic feats. You can also park a vehicle on the huge, flat, sandy beach which many surfers and windsurfers did to camp out overnight. About a mile or so is a jetty that we walked to enjoying the waves crashing at the end over the rocks. Pelicans and other assorted sea birds were perched on the railings and didn’t seem to mind the humans. Walking inland another mile, through a marshy area, we saw handfuls of people fishing on the jetty. Don’t know what they were catching but Pelicans waited near them to snatch up any flopping fish.

I recommend Lively Beach as we found it to our liking for relaxation, location on the beach, isolated setting yet proximity to the mainland 10 minutes away. Prices were reasonable including the pet fee. I liked this open beach much better than Galveston Beach near Houston. Definitely need to make a return trip back someday before it gets inundated with coastal flooding due to climate change. Mustang and Padre Islands are on the list to get flooded, unfortunately. But that’s closer to 2040 so visit it while there’s still time to enjoy this natural coastline.