I went to South Padre recently. About an hour outside of town was a wonderful surprise called Bobz world.
We had discovered in our research before the trip, but research wasn’t necessary to discover it. There was no missing the many roadside signs leading up to it. We visited on our drive back home.
We parked our cars in the lot and walked up to the building, where we walked through a giant shark jaw. Walking into the building we discovered a gift shop bigger than anything we’d seen on South Padre (Which, if you’ve been to South Padre, is saying a lot).
Anything that can be covered in shells or made out of shells is sold at Bobz. And if you’re more of a purist, there are aisles and aisles of shelves of individual shells you can buy. Here’s just some of what they sell.
They claimed 28 flavors of blue bell ice cream, which seemed impossible since I only had ever seen about ten. (According to Wikipedia there are 66 flavors. Who knew?).
In the back of the giftshop was a dark room and a cash register run by a teenager. I asked her what we could do there. She said “We have blacklight mini golf, an arcade, and a museum.” I could see the entirety of the arcade and it was pretty small and forlorn. The mini golf was hidden behind a door. We opted for the museum and were told to come back in ten minutes to be let in.
Ten minutes later we walked through the “museum” doors. I put museum in quotes because I was not sure what the museum was a museum of, exactly.
It consisted of life-size dioramas (reminiscent of Parque Jaime Duque). Cowboys, Bigfoot, The Blues Brothers, Two Elvises, CaddyShack, Bruce Lee, Astronauts, Aliens, and more.
It seemed like the theme of the museum might just be “sh*t Bob likes”.
We were underwhelmed. But then we through the doors leading to the outside part of the museum.
And Wow.
Bobz, I underestimated you.
Most roadside attractions are content to have maybe one giant dinosaur. This place was like a Jurassic Park. It was very well laid out, fun to explore, had loads of details, real plants and fountains, and it was all very clean. It was awesome.
I hesitate to tell you much more about what you’ll see but I guarantee it is worth the $11 you pay to get in.
We didn’t even see it all because it was still being repaired from damage done during the big texas freeze six months prior. There was some kind of restaurant in there and a few more paths we couldn’t get on.
Now that I’m writing this post and reflecting on the visit for the first time, I sort of regret not going into the minigolf area. Who knows what that was like. There’s also a lazer tag area (closed) that looks to be amongst the dinosaurs on the other side of the building.
(If you want a lot of spoilers, you can check out this article on vice.com for more detail and photos).