Deep In the Heart of Texas, Pt 2

Our second day on Galveston Island we boarded a ferry to go check out one of the nearby islands.

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.

The MiG-15 was flown by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was used during the Korean War:

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...

Deep In the Heart of Texas, Pt 1

My sister Abby married Justin on Saturday, June 13th, in Houston, Texas. We made the 16-hour drive down through Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and ALL of Texas. Man, that is a long drive. The northeast part of Oklahoma is kinda scenic and naturey, but after that it looks like Nebraska, except it's even more brown and featureless. And Texas ain't much better. The sucky part is that once you cross the Texas state line you're only half way there. It's a big state, yo. Day one:

They had lots of games, snacks, music, pens and paper, and movies to watch to keep them occupied. They did better than Cynthia and I expected them to.

We split up the drive over two days and planned out some points of interest to visit along the way down and back. Our first stop was Fort Scott, Kansas. It's a town that seems to be trapped in a time warp and the town square still matches the old historical photos from the 1800s. Yeah, it's changed that little. But the fort was awesome and very well maintained. They gave each of the girls an activity book to log certain specific details from their tour (sort of like a scavenger hunt) and at the end a park ranger deputized them as assistant deputy rangers.

The fort was built in the 1840s and became a training post during the Civil War. In the picture below, the stables are on the left, the Dragoon barracks are just beyond that and then the post headquarters in the smaller building. The two buildings straight ahead are the officer's barracks and then there's a well that is partially obscured by the tree on the right.

Officer's Quarters #1 and #2:

The post hospital with the guardhouse in the smaller building to the left of it. The other small building closer to the tree is the powder magazine.

Deputy rangers! They look thrilled, don't they?

We finally arrived on Galveston Island where we stayed for a couple days before the wedding:

Back at the hotel room the girls jumped on the beds they were so excited to be out of the car:

More in the next post...