We saw this ship crossing ahead of us as we left the dock. I looked it up online and found that it's a Norwegian utility ship that repairs oil rigs and was on contract to the Gulf area.
You can see a U.S. Navy ship and a submarine along the peninsula.
The rusty hull that is barely protruding from the water is the remains of a sunken concrete tanker. It's the SS Selma and it transported concrete during WWI, but it ran aground in 1920 and has been sitting there ever since.
We saw a lot of sailboats out on the Gulf:
When we got the the next island there wasn't much there, so we rode back. We weren't really headed anywhere, we really just wanted to ride the ferry, heh.
Leaving the dock headed back to Galveston:
When we got back to our hotel, we changed and hit the beach:
This is the view from outside our hotel room:
In the evening, we walked along the seawall and then went down along the beach to pick up shells. There were lots of crabs running around, which freaked the girls out at first, but then their curiosity won over.
Funny story about picking up shells... Rose and Emily collected a lot of shells and some of them were larger. On the trip back to Iowa, there was a face-melting stench like something crawled up into the car and died, came back to life and then died again. We dug through our luggage until we realized the smell was coming from the collection of shells. One of the shells still had a resident living in it when it was collected... only now he wasn't living anymore. On the way back we soaked 'em in bleach and that took care of the stink.
The next day we went to the Lone Star Flight Museum. It was a collection of mostly WWII aircraft with a few cold war aircraft as well.
There were some cool seafood places along the seawall, so we stopped at one and the waiter had a nifty routine of magic tricks that completely baffled Emily.
The following day we went into Houston to help get the church set up for Abby and Justin's wedding. After the rehearsal, the dinner was at Justin's aunt's house in the suburbs. Houston is a shining example of urban sprawl and very poor urban planning, so trying to get anywhere is kind of a nightmare. There is almost no public transportation, so the nearly 4 million residents have to drive. It took us an hour to drive 19 miles. So glad we don't live there.
Some pictures at the church:
I designed the wedding invite as well:
Stay tuned for Part 3...
