You reminded me of a trip to Padre some decades ago.

My best friend and I went down for a week as well. We also had no money for a hotel, so every night we drove down the island, pulled into the dunes (he had a Jeep), pulled out our sleeping bags and slept on the sand. We showered and cleaned up each morning at the public showers.

One night early on we were out especially late. Down the island there are no streetlights. It is a national park. Off the blacktop the only lights were from our headlights. We slept as usual on some dunes a few meters from the Jeep.

We were woken VERY early by a cop lightly kicking my friend. Apparently we were in a no-parking zone. There was a sign facing the other way that we couldn't see in the dark. The cop gave us a ticket and said it would probably be about $250 (figure $400+ now). That meant the end of our holidays only a couple days in.

We drove to the courthouse when it opened. The judge looked us over, asked us for an explanation, thought it over for about 30 seconds and rendered judgement. $12.

This was back in the mid-80s. The US was on top of the world. We were two middle-class white boys. If the cop had searched the open Jeep before he woke us up (which he probably did), he would not have found anything illegal.

I look at this with 2020 eyes. I've had decades of experience and reading both in Texas and then around the world. I'm 100% sure that if we had been two black boys illegally sleeping on that beach things would not have gone so well for us.