Galveston in October.

Man the last few weeks have been busy.  We went to Galveston.  Left on Saturday morning and back at sunset on Sunday.  We should've left on Friday and woke up at the beach but I had a panic attack about the crazy pets we were leaving behind.  Is two days too long to have Jim look after them.? Was Frito going to go crazy in the house?  I know that worthless hound dog can sleep 14 hours straight when he wants to but with us not being home, would he?  Oh well.  Next time, we leave on Friday. 

Now that that's settled... what did we do? Before we get there. I have one more comment. I think San Antonio is big, growing up in a town of 2,000 people makes it feel that way.  Then I go to Houston.  That place is HUGE.  I am in awe of how big that city is.

Okay, what did we do? We started at Buc-cees for breakfast. Did you know their breakfast tacos are $2.50 each?  They were big but that was a little bit of sticker shock when we can get three and a coffee for that price in our booming metropolis.  The kolaches were not that good.  They turned my stomach.  The bread is too sweet and the sausage was smoky and sweet all in one - gross.  After that, I entertained Sy in the back seat all the way through Houston.  Note to self, next time bring new toys, paper and crayons for this part of the trip - or better yet, leave on Friday night and he will sleep the whole way.
We stopped at Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake. There was some sort of balloon fest going on.  At some point they were going to fly hot air balloons but the exhibits were all home improvement and such so we passed on that.  We went to Rocket Park (Free) and saw Saturn V and some other rockets.  Very cool.  There were having an exhibit of how we got to the moon and how we were going to get back. Very interesting stuff.  We were sure Sy didn't catch any of it until he recited it to Grandma Sheetz hours later on the phone - cool.

The brown section in the top left corner was the piece that held the astronauts on their way to the moon.  Very small when you see the entire thing.  Amazing.

We headed to Galveston from Clear Lake.  We stayed at Gaido's on the Seawall.  The room was very BASIC but the view was kicker.  Worth every penny. And to think that we wanted to stay at the Hotel Galvez, which has a much longer walk to the beach - (with a three year old, we opted against this).

We played on the beach, took a ferry ride and went to Seawolf Park to see the WWII escort ship and submarine.  Very cool stuff.  We stopped at the ship terminal on the way out to show Sy the cruise ship.  He is ready to take his first cruise.  Mexico would be fine but he's never been to Jamaica so he would like to see that too.  I think that will wait until he's older.  For that much money, I want to be sure he remembers every second of it! 

Sy fell asleep 15 minutes outside of Galveston.  We didn't hear from him again until we were 2 miles from home where his first words were "can we go on vacation?"  I'm glad he had fun.

As a side note, Hurricane Ike hit the island last fall.  It did some major damage. The rocks at the bottom of the seawall, all the piers and jetties are gone.  The sand now comes up on the steps that lead you from the wall to the beach. And there are a lot of hotels and restaurants still not repaired.