Catching the last train for the coast

This past Tuesday J. and I went to the Texas Gulf Coast-- specifically Padre Island, just across from Corpus Christi. I have long had an interest in coasts and I have always loved songs that mention coasts (think American Pie: "they caught the last train for the coast" or The World at Large: "I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast" or Mrs. Potter's Lullaby: "You can never escape, you can only move south down the coast"). However, I have always associated coasts with either east or west - specifically in North America. East and west are opposites, are counterparts, and maybe because of that I found it difficult to imagine this third North American coastline.
Now that I have been to the Gulf Coast,however, I need to readjust my thinking. As soon as we got out of the car all I could smell was the familiar and welcoming salt of the ocean. And though at first I resisted calling the Gulf the ocean, thinking that it sounded wrong when J. referred to it as that, I found myself calling it just that today. It certainly looked like the ocean and felt like the ocean and tasted like the ocean and had waves like the ocean, and gave my hair perfect salty curls like the ocean does-- in short, it is the ocean! And I need to accept that!
I think maybe part of the reason I resisted seeing the Gulf Coast as a real coast is because with the east and west coasts you have ocean stretching out in one direction for thousands of miles. There is something both romantic and magical about standing at the edge of the ocean on either the east or west coast of North America and imagining how that very same ocean stretches all the way to Asia or to Europe or to Africa. I think that is where, at least for me, a large part of the appeal of coasts comes from- and why I like those song lyrics I quoted above. One can feel like they're starting over, like they're escaping, they can become a new person either with no past or an invented one, when they're on the coast-- right on the edge of a continent and on the edge of the world as they know it... Beyond the horizon, where the eye can no longer reach, lies a whole new world, unfamiliar and mysterious... The Gulf Coast is lacking that appeal for me mostly because the Gulf, as the map above shows, looks more like a Bay, and because I know that really not that far away is the Caribbean... And while the Caribbean is also interesting and different and exotic, somehow its proximity makes it less interesting and distinct and exotic than Asia or Africa.
But ultimately it was so exciting to discover that one can spend a day by the ocean in Texas! After last summer, West Texas was my favourite part of the state. I think now, though, South Texas is giving the Western part of the state a run for its money!