Texas Vacation - Day Seven - Tourists

Day Seven was Thursday, April 11th. Day Six could have been described as our Refugee Day. Day Seven was our Tourist Day. We didn't have anywhere to travel that day. We were just staying in Galveston and enjoying the fun things do see and do there.  

We woke up at our amazing hotel and went downstairs for breakfast. Here are the kids eating. 

We went back upstairs and everyone got dressed. Then we went for a walk on the beach. It was so fun to just cross the street and be at the beach. I was still so in awe with the location of this hotel.

The wind was blowing a lot less than it had the day before and the waves were a lot calmer. 

Here I am. My feet were doing just fine with all the walking, but the calf muscle on my right leg was another story. Somehow I'd developed a charly horse type feeling in my leg. I think it came from trying to sleep in the passenger seat of the car during the rain storm. That feeling would be in my leg for the next few days until I remembered that I'd packed lidocaine in case my feet acted up. I put that on the muscle and it felt much better. 

This is a look back at our hotel. Galveston has a sea wall that was built like 100 years ago. So the beach is much lower than the road that runs along it. 

The kids were finding lots of cool things in the sand. I think this is another dead jelly fish. 

Yep. Derrick later told me that the big storm killed them and pushed them to shore. I don't know how accurate that is, but I've found his knowledge of ocean life to be pretty reliable. So we'll go with that. 

He also found a hermit crab.

There are these random cement piers spaced about every 1/8 of a mile along the beach. They are fun to climb on.

I love this picture of Charlotte using the binoculars. 

Here's the view to the east. You can barely make out the Pleasure Pier in the distance. 

Veronica had to go to the bathroom so I was considering running back to the hotel with her. But Brandon told me there were public bathrooms up on the seawall. He pointed one out to me. So I took her to that. It was a tiny little building. Inside was a toilet and a sink. On the outside was a little shower to wash sand off your feet. 

Here are me and Brandon together. 

The kids. 

Derrick found a coconut and thought it was pretty cool.

Here's a closer view of the Pleasure Pier. The Ferris Wheel is lit up at night and we could see it really well from our Hotel. The kids really wanted to go there, but 1. It was only open on weekends. And 2. It was really expensive. So we didn't go there.

We did walk under it. 

That was about as far as we went that morning. It was about a mile to the pier.  We turned and started walking back to the hotel. The kids had tons of sea shells that they'd gathered. 

Back at the hotel we had a little lunch. We were still totally in love with our hotel, but it wasn't exactly a 5 star establishment. We were in the "hotel" part, but most of it was more of a motel. And kind of a run down one. 

And I was starting to realize that our room was kind of missing a few things. Namely a table. There was a big open space on the side of the big room. I was like, "I think there used to be a table and chairs here. We could use a table and chairs."

Fortunately, Lindsey had let us take some of her old camp chairs. My plan had been to buy camp chairs in Galveston if we needed them. Lindsey was like, "How about you just take these two chairs that are starting to fall apart. You can use them and then just throw them away when you are done. I'll buy new ones for myself."

We didn't use the camp chairs at the beach, but they were helpful in that hotel room. 

After lunch we drove over to the bay side of the island to the historic Pier 21 area. Our plan was to take a Harbor Tour and see Dolphins with the with Texas Seaport Museum. This company also owned the Historic Tall Ship Elyssa and I wanted to see that ship. We'd done both these things the last time we were in Galveston and I wanted to do that again.

BUT, there were some snags in our plan. 1. The Elyssa was GONE! She's one of the oldest working sailing ships in the world and wouldn't you know it. She was off sailing. Good for her, but she would have been part of the cost of our ticket and I didn't want to pay for the harbor ride without touring the Elyssa. 

2. We were hoping to get onto a tour around 1:00, but that tour was booked. There was room on the 2:30 tour, but that meant we wouldn't be done until like 4:00 and we had other plans for the day. 

So we decided to just walk around the piers a little bit and then maybe take the free ferry over to the bolivar peninsula and count that as a boat ride. 

While we were walking I noticed a little booth advertising dolphin tours. And so I went over there to see how much they cost. It was like $20 a person, but Derrick was so excited about seeing dolphins and well we'd come all this way. And honestly I'd been prepared for that type of price. We'd done all that free hiking during spring break so that we could have money for this type of thing in Texas. So yes, I pulled out my card and paid for the tour with Baywatch Dolphin Boat Tour Adventures. 

We had a few minutes before we needed to get on the boat so we  walked around a little bit more. Here I am with Charlotte. 

Across the bay we could see an old Battleship. I was like, "that looks like the Texas. But the Texas isn't here. It's near the San Jacinto monument." 

There were a lot of these types of sculptures made from trash. It was kind of fun to look at them and see random things like tooth brushes. 

At 1:45 we were at the spot where we'd meet our boat. It pulled in and I was like, "OH we are going on a party boat!"

Here we are on board. We were all so excited. 

Our captain was really fun. He went around and asked where everyone was from. There were people there from all over. The only ones I remember now were Oklahoma and Canada. 

Then we started driving out on the water. The first thing we drove by was the battleship. 

And what do you know, It was the Texas. This is the only surviving war ship that fought in both World War 1 and World War 2. And its a DREADNAUGHT!!!!!! Dreadnaughts are so cool. We'd toured this ship as a family back in 2014 because I'd always been really interested in Dreadnaughts.

It's here for a renovation and then it will be on permanent display here. 

I told Veronica, "I changed your diaper in front of that big gun towards the front of the ship."

The tour took us past more boats. but we were really there to see dolphins. The captain took us east toward a bridge. He said that we had a good chance of seeing the dolphins there this time of day.

 Here are me and Veronica. I was having a great time. The boat had lots of fun songs playing. My favorite was Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline. That song will always make me smile.  So pull up Sweet Caroline and listen to the intro while looking at these pictures. 

The captain was funny. He said that if one of us dropped our phone into the water we should raise our hands. He said he would also raise his hand and then, "We can both waive goodbye to your phone together."

Here we are looking for dolphins. 

It was really fun when we started spotting them. 

Derrick was so happy. 

Here's a video of the dolphins (plus the Captain's informative commentary.)

And here's a link to a short. This was originally a Marco Polo that I sent to my siblings. I think it has the best footage of the dolphins. So make sure you check it out. 

Here's what the inside of the boat looked like. 

We were in the dolphin area for about 15 minutes and then the Captain took us to see some other parts of the harbor. 

These ships were cool.

Then he took us past the hospital and told us the story of the face on one of the hospital buildings. Here's a link to more info and a better view of the face. Veronica couldn't see it so I took a picture at the last minute and then zoomed it in for her. But it's really hard to see here if you aren't looking. 

We also went by a big cruise ship getting ready to go out. 

It was massive. 

The tour had been about 45 minutes and was totally worth the money.

We got back around 2:00. We had a little bit of trouble getting out of our parking space and the gate attendant had to come help us. Then we drove back to the hotel. The kids wanted to swim in the pool again while it was warm. So we went there.

I'd had just about as much sun exposure as I could handle on this trip. Normally I'm super good about sun block, but since we'd come from early spring weather in Idaho I wasn't exactly in CONSTANT VIGILANCE mode with sun screen. I'd assumed that spray sun block would be fine. IT WAS NOT. I should have been coating myself in the rub on stuff since I still had my pale winter skin. So I'd ended up with some bad burns on part of my neck, back, and legs. So I hung out in the shade of a pool umbrella for a while. 

But eventually the kids coaxed me near the water. I sat on the edge and dangled my feet in the pool to cool off. But I wrapped myself in my towel to keep me from getting any more burns. 

Brandon went grocery shopping at Walmart. We'd start driving again the next day so we needed to replenish the snack situation. He also picked up two pizzas at Little Caesars. 

The pizzas were for the kids dinner. Brandon and I were going on a date. We were so excited that the kids are finally old enough that we can leave them unsupervised in a hotel room. 

So they had pizza and rootbeer for dinner. And we walked down to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company that was on the Pleasure Pier. 

I've always wanted to eat at a Bubba Gump. I think it's so funny that a company that was made up for the Forrest Gump movie was created in real life. The place is decorated with pictures and memorabilia from the movie. 

They also had a signed picture of Gary Sinise. (If you are looking for a good book I HIGHLY recommend his memoir, Grateful American.)

This was the view from our table. It was so fun to look out at the beach. 

I wanted shrimp and Brandon wanted crab legs so we compromised and got a shrimp and crab leg combo dish. When it showed up I thought I was being punked. Brandon picked up the crab leg and started cracking the meat out. I was like, "What in the heck is happening?" 

Brandon had me try a little of the crab meat, but I didn't like it. I stuck with the shrimp which was sooooo good. 

On the way back to our hotel we stopped at a big gift shop called Murdochs. It had lots of beach things and souvenirs. I bought a magnet for our fridge and a cute shell Christmas ornament. I was worried the ornament would break on the way home so I had the cashier wrap it up. He did an excellent job and it made it home in one piece. 

Back at the hotel we all changed into our swimming suits and went to the beach one last time. 

It was about 6:00 when we got there and the sky was so pretty.

Years ago we read The Berenstain Bears Go on Vacation when we checked the book out from the library. (Not to be confused with Too Much Vacation.) It is the one of the most beautiful children's books I've ever read. I know that it inspired our 2014 Texas Beach Road Trip. I love that book so I bought it for myself for Christmas a few years ago. I'd wistfully look at the pictures of sun sets in that book. I think it probably inspired me to make sure we made it to Galveston on this trip. 

So it was really special to finally be playing on the beach during a beautiful sunset.   

I left my phone on the shore and went out into the water with the kids. We had so much fun riding on the waves with the boogie boards. At first we were bobbing up and down and letting the waves carry us around. But after a while I "got tired of being slapped in the face by the ocean."  So I went out a little deeper, past the place where the waves crested. I still got the bobbing feeling, but less of the violence of the cresting waves. 

Derrick figured out how to ride the waves back in with his boogie board. He told me he wanted to learn to surf. 

I was out in the water with the kids for something like an hour. And it was pure bliss. 

At  some point Charlotte and Lydia had started a sandcastle. I took this picture after I came back from the water when the sky was nearly dark. 

Here's the view of the our hotel and some other businesses from the beach. 

We went back to the hotel and spent some time getting organized. Everyone took another shower. I tried to dry the swimming suits and towels as best I could by draping them over the chairs. I also borrowed a broom from the front desk so I could sweep up all the sand. We basically had a small beach in our room by this point. I didn't have a dust pan so I just swept all the sand into a corner and put the sandals over there too.

Brandon had bought more snacks and more ziplock bags so I spent some time dividing things like cookies and candy into small bags that would be easier to hand out while we were travelling. 

We were all a little sad that this was our last night in Galveston. Brandon had been looking at every business and thinking, "I could work there." And the kids were all like, "Why do we live in Idaho?'

But we were also a little homesick. We'd started this trip a week before on the evening of Thursday April 4th. So even though we didn't want to leave the beach we could all feel that it was probably time to start heading home. 

But that could wait into morning.