Saying Good-Bye to Galveston

 Thinking about our stay for the past month we wanted to list some of our favorite things about the area. 

·     Waking up in the morning and looking out onto sunrise over the Gulf

·     Walking through the many National Wildlife Refuges in the area and spotting so many exquisite birds.  Also having so many days where we could walk outside and enjoy the warmer weather.

·     Getting a special tour of NASA by Alex’s friend Russell.  We won’t soon forget meeting a real-life astronaut and getting to walk into mission control.  Thanks Russell!

·     Walking along the Gulf and seeing dolphins jumping in the water and other sea creatures

·     Learning about the interesting history of Galveston and seeing the old buildings that made it through the devastating 1900 hurricane.

·     The sea turtle research facility was unexpectedly interesting

·     The Museum District in Houston is definitely worth a visit if you get to this area.

·     Interesting people we met including T. Phillip Washington, the bow tied prosecutor from the Galveston County District Attorney’s office, and James, our waiter at Willy G’s, who is studying to be a marine engineer and who served in the infantry at Fallujah, Iraq.

Tomorrow we leave for Natchez and the Blueberry Hill Cottage overlooking the Mississippi.  Will write soon.  Love Peggy and Gene

Miscellaneous Musings

Sea Turtles:
NOAA (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) runs a sea turtle research laboratory in Galveston and we were able to take a tour.  Here are some of interesting things we learned:

• There are 5 different kinds of sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico and all are either endangered or threatened
• The Galveston lab's captive rearing program raises 2 types: the Kemp's Ridley and Loggerhead
• The Kemp's Ridley turtle is the most endangered with the smallest population
• The lab's program includes gathering up the eggs from nests laid by mothers; monitoring the hatching and then raising the young until they are 2 years old.  This raises the probability that the hatchlings will make it to adulthood from 1% to 95%.  
• Much of the work the lab is doing is to help save turtles from shrimpers' nets.  The turtles would get stuck in the nets and drown.  The lab has designed a net that allow the turtles to escape (but keeps the shrimp in).

  

  The Turtle Barn where each turtle has it's own small tub.  The temperature in the Barn is kept at a balmy 86 degrees.

  These Kemp's Ridleys were about 2 months old:

 

 

A 2 year old Loggerhead.

Tanks for the larger turtles.  Everyday they put in new water from the gulf.

The Days Between Ice Storms:

The Houston/Galveston area has not been immune to the bad weather most other parts of the country are experiencing.  Last Thursday we had an ice storm that they knew was coming, but still they kept the freeways and overpasses open.  No surprise that there were over 500 accidents that day. 

We aren't looking for sympathy, but we did have icicles on our balcony.

 Three Days Later it was 70 Degrees

Visiting Houston
Downtown Houston is pretty impressive. 

  One of our favorite places in Houston is the Museum District and Hermann Park.

There is a big lagoon with lots of ducks.

Really pretty ducks we don't see in WI

Lots of families out enjoying the weather

One type of light rail runs next to the park and one right through the park.  See if you can tell which one is which:

 

Rice University

Rice is right next to Hermann Park.  We took a walk through...

Beautifully manicured grounds

Rice's mascot is the Owl

As I write this today, our area is scheduled to have another ice storm tonight this time with a little more snow added in.  Then by the week-end, we are looking at 70 degrees again.  CRAZY!

Closing with a picture of my favorite house along the ocean:

I expect to see fairytale characters come out, but we've never seen anyone...yet

Walking

     We have a daily goal of walking at least 10,000 steps (around 5 miles).  As of the time I'm writing this, we've met that goal for 20 consecutive days.  Each day we try to find a different location to walk in and we've come across some interesting venues for our exercise.

Surfside Jetty Park

     One of our walks was at the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge.  Associated with that trip was a visit to the cities of Freeport and Surfside.  In Surfside we stumbled (figuratively) on Jetty Park.  The jetty in Jetty Park juts out into the water for about a mile.  The center of the Jetty is a paved path tailor made for easy walking.  During our walk on the jetty we saw lots of people fishing and many cleaning and cooking their catch.  The jetty went far enough out into the water that we saw a pod of dolphins less than 50 feet from the jetty.

 

the jetty in Jetty Park

dolphins swimming alongside the jetty

Texas City Dike and Bay Street Park

     Texas City is a very short drive from our "home" in Galveston.  The Texas City dike extends five miles into Galveston Bay.  There is plenty of beach area to walk along and watch the tankers and barges travel along either side of the dike and through the narrow channel where the car ferry operates.  

      Near the Texas City dyke is Bay Street Park.  Lots of hiking and biking trails can be found both in the park and along the Skyline Drive, a road along a levee dividing Dollar Bay and Galveston Bay.  Hard to keep track of all the dikes, levees and jetties.

Some of the artwork found in Bay Street Park

Overnighter to Port Aransas and Aransas National Wildlife Refuge

     One of us has a passion for birds.  We set out on a trip to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in hopes of sighting the endangered whooping crane in the wild.  We reserved a spot on a 7:30 a.m. boat trip leaving Fulton Harbor during which we were guaranteed to see whooping cranes in the wild.   We stayed overnight in nearby Port Aransas.   We walked the beach and sand dunes area on the island after taking a 2 and 1/2 minute car ferry trip across the bay.  During that walk we came across beach artwork.

     We got up early and made our way to the dock area at dawn.

 

     Unfortunately, it was far too windy for the excursion.  As one fellow said, "When the palm trees are one sided, you don't sail the boat".  However, all was not lost in our quest.  We drove to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and on our trip on the very first trail we made our own sighting of a group of whooping cranes.  We went off the path (A flagrant violation of the lesson learned from last year's winter trip) to get closer to take the pictures from about 50 yards away.  A successful side trip after all.

ETC.

     People here not only drive cars to the beach but frequently drive their cars on the beach.  Several times we've parked our 4x4 off road vehicle on the beach while we strolled.

I know it looks like I'm lighting up a cigarette but I'm actually checking my fitbit to see if I reached 10,000 steps.

There's no good explanation for this last picture.

Back to Houston

Reliant Stadium
Reliant Stadium is home to J.J. Watt and the Houston Texans - who unexpectedly had a horrible season.  Continuing with our exploration of Texas sports stadiums (we've been to Cowboys Stadium, Texas A&M, University of Texas in Austin, Baylor University and probably some I can't remember), we took a tour of Reliant Stadium.  It was what I call functional-nice, but not fancy-nice (like the Cowboys stadium).  It has a retractable roof that was closed when we were there. 

This was the pretty part.

Virginia was our tour guide.

They had taken up the football field and were preparing for a Monster Truck show.

A view from the press box.  They were partially burying cars to make jumps... I think??

Ground-breaking Texas style.  This 1962 photo was in the lobby of the stadium. 

Reliant Stadium is run by the Texans organization for about half the year (during the football season) and then by the Texas Rodeo the other half of the year.  In March they have a rodeo event that lasts for about 3 weeks.  They bring in big name cowboy-folks and singers.  It is a HUGE event in Houston.  It seems that more people were excited about the rodeo than about the Texans. 

The Museum District and Herman Park

We had a chance to ride the light rail into downtown and then back to the Museum District.  We happened to be there on a Thursday afternoon when they make all the museums free!  We took in the Natural History Museum - where we learned even more about how oil is formed and how they get it out of the ground and saw some really neat dinosaur skeletons.

Spooky lighting added to the scary factor when looking at the skeletons

Of course we had to photograph the largest birds that have ever flown.

Right next to the museums, there is the lovely, large Herman Park.  It has large fountains, a great pond where we saw more types of ducks than on any Wildlife Refuge, a Japanese Garden and the Houston Zoo.  It was a beautiful, warm day to walk. 

The Japanese Gardens...probably not as pretty as they might be at another time of year.

More soon :)  Peggy

Exploration:  Land, Sea and Outer Space

Land

The longer we are in an area, the better acquainted we become with what it has to offer.  A few days ago we discovered Galveston State Park and a short walk through a nature preserve near a housing development called Pirates Cove.  Both of these locations are within a few miles of where we're staying.   Pirates Cove is named as such because famous pirate, Jean Lafitte, had his base there.

      Trails like this one at Galveston State Park make it easy to follow last year's forgotten rule:  Stay on the Path!  We walked for miles on flat trails through a marshy area along the bay.  Saw lots of herons, egrets and other types of birds.

 

     The remains of Jean Laffitte's headquarters has been replaced by an upscale subdivision where many of the large homes have a boat slip on canals off the bay.  In the middle of that subdivision was a 36 acre nature preserve with walking trails and a boardwalk through the marsh.

      The other land exploration had to do with chasing a little white ball around the golf course which is less than a mile from our "home".  I'm choosing not to say anything about how I played.

Sea

     One of the tourist type attractions in downtown Galveston is an oil drilling platform.  The Ocean Star was once a working oil drilling rig in the ocean.  It was a floating rig and when it was no longer in use it was floated into the harbor in Galveston and now serves as an oil rig museum.  We learned all about the geology, the geophysics, the economics and public relations  from the perspective of the oil industry.  The museum was well done (I'm guessing there is a substantial amount of money in the oil business) and we did learn a lot. 

 

 

     The device used to transfer people and supplies from helicopters or ships onto the oil rig.

 

      The device used in the event something goes terribly wrong.   There wasn't any mention in any of the exhibits about dealing with blowouts and issues such as that with the BP spill in the Gulf a few years ago.

Outer Space

today's sunrise

     Today we were lucky to be given a personal tour of Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center outside of Houston.   Our tour guide was Russell Derrick, a friend of our son.  Russell works in Mission Control as a biomedical engineer.  We spent the morning with Russell touring a large building where there is a full size mock-up of the International Space Station that is used for training the astronauts.  He took us to Mission Control where we were able to go onto the floor of the area where the actual monitoring of all aspects of the station is done.  There were very large screens with live video feeds from the parts of the station were displayed as well as a world map showing the location of the station in flight.  While we were in the control room area the station traveled from Alaska to South America.

Russell showing us his spot in mission control

 

 

     Part of our tour included a visit to the old mission control room that was used during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo flights.  While we were on the tour we were introduced to a Canadian astronaut who was also giving someone a tour.  He offered to take the picture of our tour group (all three of us) at the Flight Director position in the old Mission Control room.

 

A new rule - never have your picture taken next to an astronaut