Galveston

Galveston oh Galveston
I still hear your seawinds blowing...

Glen Cambell

Sorry for the font size... wasted two hours trying to correct it and have given up.

We should have paid more attention to the lyrics to that song. For our first few days here we have had strong onshore winds and waves that made sitting on the beach a bit challenging.

We arrived here on Saturday afternoon and had no trouble locating our rental condo that is right on Seawall Drive. It is a comfortable one bedroom unit on the ground floor that provided handy access to the beach directly across the street at the foot of the seawall. 

The seawall was constructed after the entire city was destroyed in a hurricane in 1900. 

We did a beach walk to the 61st St Pier after unpacking. 

Then a trip to Walmart for some provisions. We are planning on having most of our suppers at home this week to try to have some semblance of cost control for this part of our trip. 

Sunday morning we went for a walk westward for a few miles then returned for lunch, gathered our chairs and books and crossed the street to the beach to relax for the afternoon. The breeze made it comfortable but the sand was blowing a bit.

On Monday we decided to do a bit of exploring of Galveston Island in the vehicle. We drove east on Seawall Drive to the end and visited East Beach which is supposed to be party central. Well, we were there the day after spring break and not a soul to be seen. Again a very windy day. 

We also watched the heavy shipping traffic coming and going from Houston Bay.

We decided to check out the historic downtown which has been undergoing an urban renewal. The core area is called "The Strand" and features some interesting Victorian Architecture. Note the elevated sidewalks.

We had lunch on the water at the inner harbour and had a chance to check out the port.

The wind was still blowing so we decided to try out the pool and hot tub at the condo rather than get sandblasted. We discovered that the pool was not heated and just tolerable after a dip in the hot tub.

Tuesday weather was forecast to be a bit nasty in the afternoon so we got underway early in the morning and went to tour the Ocean Star Drilling Rig. This is a retired offshore oil drilling rig that was converted to a museum and information centre that had some great displays that explained all of the various forms of offshore oil and gas exploration, drilling and recovery rigs and vessels.

On our way home we stopped at the Tourist Information Centre and found out about a project undertaken after Hurricane Ike wiped out the tree canopy in 2008. A number of large tree stumps were converted to wood sculptures throughout the heart of the city.

By the time we got home, the winds picked up to gale force and then the rain started. We settled in to watch some TV for the rest of the day.

The weather forecast for Wednesday was again a bit unsettled with improvement coming on Thursday so we decided that today would be the day to tour the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston. This was a fabulous tour bringing back memories of the tremendous achievements in space exploration in the 50's, 60's and 70's.

The lunar lander

Skylab

Mercury capsule

Apollo 17, the last moon mission

Lunar rover

Space shuttle cockpit

A Saturn V Rocket

Part of the tour took us through the building where they have full scale training replicas of the the International Space Station, Soyuz Shuttle and the future Orion project.

Thursday the weather improved and we headed to Galveston Island State Park for the day. It was a nice quiet beach although the wind was up a bit but we stuck it out for the day.

I returned for sunset with nice views over Galveston Bay.

I also stopped at the fishing pier on the way home.

Traffic along Seawall Drive...

Friday was our last day so off to the beach again. This time we drove to the west end of the island where we could park on the beach and camp out for the day.

The whole west end of the island has nice stilt homes lining the beachfront.

After spending a few hours here we relocated to the extreme west end of the island which had an expansive sand beach open to vehicles. This is where all of the young crowd congregates. What a zoo. People driving 80 mph on the beach in their sand toys. We didn't hang around too long.

Saturday morning we packed up and started heading east to Baton Rouge for an overnight stay before spending some time in Memphis. 

We took the ferry to the Bolivar Peninsula to save driving through Houston.

An interesting part of I10 is where it cuts across a large bayou. There is a 30 km stretch of interstate highway which is entirely supported on concrete pilings as you drive above the swamp! Bet that wasn't cheap to build.

At least this section didn't have the endless billboards advertising personal injury lawyers. No kidding, there was at least one every 1/2 km in Texas! In Louisiana, the main billboard theme seemed to be for places serving Boudins and Cracklins.