Things to Do in Corpus Christi and the Coastal Bend: A Pier, a Carrier, and a Two-Story Whataburger
Corpus Christi gets sold as a beach town, and the beaches are fine. But the stops we keep going back for are the ones along the bay: a pier that came back from a hurricane, a warship that came back from everything, and a burger place with an elevator. Every place on this list is somewhere we’ve actually walked, photographed, and in one case ordered a Whataburger with cheese.
The list starts on the Corpus Christi bayfront and works its way up the coast, because that’s the direction we always end up driving it on the way home to Houston.
Corpus Christi
Cole Park Pier
Hurricane Harvey wrecked the old pier here in 2017, and the city spent about $7.5 million putting a better one back. Cole Park Pier reopened in December 2021 with the 1930s “Cole Park” arch recreated at the entrance, and it’s free to walk, wide enough that the anglers and the stroller crowd stay out of each other’s way, with covered pavilions at the far end that catch a steady bay breeze. Walk all the way out and look back: the skyline view improves with every step. The rest of Cole Park has a playground and a skate park if the kids outvote you.
USS Lexington
The USS Lexington is an 872-foot World War II carrier with a nickname she earned the hard way: Japanese radio reported her sunk four times, and four times she showed back up, so they started calling her the Blue Ghost. She’s been a floating museum in Corpus Christi Bay since 1992, with five self-guided tour routes, more than 20 aircraft on deck, and escape rooms below for families who need more adrenaline than a flight deck already provides. John flew the drone for the photo above and has called her the best drone subject on the coast ever since. Give her at least half a day, and if you want a full one, the Texas State Aquarium is right next door on North Beach.
Whataburger by the Bay
Whataburger was born in Corpus Christi in 1950, and for its 50th birthday the chain built itself a present in its hometown: Whataburger by the Bay, the only two-story Whataburger on Earth, right on Shoreline Boulevard. There’s a balcony looking out over the water. There’s an elevator. In a Whataburger. The menu is the same one you already know, but we can report that a burger eaten upstairs with a bay view does taste a little better, and we don’t intend to explain why.
Up the Coast on TX-35
Tivoli Redfish Water Tower
About an hour up TX-35 sits Tivoli, a Refugio County town of around 400 people where the water tower is the tallest thing for miles and somebody painted a redfish on it. That’s the whole attraction, and it’s enough. The Tivoli Redfish Water Tower is a two-minute stop that tells you exactly where you are on the Texas coast. John caught it at sundown from the air, which is more ceremony than the tower usually gets.
Port Lavaca
Bayfront Peninsula Park & Fishing Pier
Bayfront Peninsula Park pushes out into Lavaca Bay with water on three sides and the Calhoun County veterans memorial at the very tip, flags snapping in a wind that never seems to take a day off. There’s a fishing pier, a playground, and a standing flock of seagulls all facing into the breeze like a choir waiting on a downbeat. Park under them at your own risk.
Halfmoon Reef Lighthouse
The Halfmoon Reef Lighthouse spent 84 years standing on iron screw piles in the middle of Matagorda Bay, survived the Civil War, and later put in a long second career as a dredging company’s office. Now it’s retired to the lawn of the Port Lavaca Welcome Center, which means the last screw-pile lighthouse on the Texas coast lives next to a parking lot. Ten minutes, no ticket, and a better story than plenty of museums.
Buc-ee’s Store No. 12
Before Buc-ee’s went supersized, it built regular gas stations, and Store No. 12 in Port Lavaca was one of them: open 24 hours a day for 26 straight years. It’s becoming a 7-Eleven now, which feels a little like watching a famous band’s first garage get torn down. We stopped in for its last Christmas. If you want to see what the empire looked like before it was an empire, don’t wait too long.
Keep Going
If you’re taking the coast road on toward Houston, the detours don’t stop at Port Lavaca. Victoria has a set of Easter Island heads standing in front of an office building, the Nave Museum in a columned little temple of a building, and DeLeon City Plaza at the center of town. Goliad, a half hour west, holds the heaviest history on this stretch: Presidio La Bahia and the Fannin Memorial Monument tell a story most road trippers pass without ever knowing it’s there. Pick two or three of these and the drive home stops being the boring part.
