Monday, October 11, 2010

Vacation Day 1, Part 2: Galveston Beach

I forgot to post the map of our travels yesterday! We started in Houston and worked our way counterclockwise on this path. It ended up being right at 1,568 miles. I love using Google Maps to plan our trips and get estimated travel times, it makes it a lot easier than when I used to do this all by hand.


View Larger Map


The beaches in Galveston were really nice. There really weren't any hotels along the coast, so it was just miles and miles of beach you could actually park on, and since we got there later in the day it wasn't crowded at all.
She had gotten a little blister on her foot earlier in the day and when she was wearing shoes it hurt to walk, so she'd gotten where she just didn't want to walk at all. She was really happy to be at the beach, but it took a while to convince her she could walk around and the sand wouldn't bother her ankle.
She loved the little shells on the beach....
And then when we FINALLY got her to walk around she was just in heaven, running in and out of the waves and chasing birds.
Anytime a seagull or pigeon was around she'd chase them all over the place.


Of course our little side trip to the beach ended up being a messy little endeavor. Once she started digging around in the sand of course she had to sample it, so sand started spreading from her hands to face and then all over.
And then she was pretty much just crawling around and rolling all in the sand, having a blast.
She was walking up to strangers and having her little conversations with them....of course we wish she'd be a little more particular with who she talks to.....
We probably played for an hour or hour and a half at the beach before we decided to head on our way. Of course Lilli had to have an outfit change!! From there we were heading up the Texas line but had to take the Galveston ferry. It's free, but a TOTAL pain. It took us an hour before we were able to board it. They were constantly coming and going, but they don't hold that many cars and there were SO many people waiting. We had snacks and stayed entertained, but we were SO glad when we finally got to board. This is one side of cars.
Here's one of the ferries we met as we crossed the water. The boats weren't that big, so not that many cars got on each time.
The boat ride was fun, there were even porpoises swimming alongside.
Once we finally got on the other side we really don't know where all the other cars went because this little highway running up the coast was pretty much deserted. Hurricane Ike had wiped out most everything through here, so it was just coastline and was so pretty with the sun setting. We saw our first Texas oil rig.
The coast was just empty and so crystal clear with the sun setting.
Then we turned and started heading up and more into marshlands.
It was so nice to have GPS on this trip and know where we should stop for the night. In this little Texas town we knew we'd have a few options and there would be nothing else for about 30 miles. We ate at a little steakhouse and I had an awesome brisket and Brent had (what he says) was the best ribeye sandwich EVER. I would tell you where you could have this sandwich but I don't even remember the name of this town. (Ok, Brent's reading over my shoulder and said this was in Winnie, Texas.) They were also having some big Rice Festival and it was nuts!!
We ended up getting a nice little room at LaQuinta for the evening. Lilli did great the whole trip with sleeping, since we were so off our normal routine she'd usually stay up until between 9:15-9:45 and we'd all go to bed. She went right to sleep every night and we never heard a fuss from her, which was SO nice! Personally I loved all the extra sleep since we're normally in bed around 11 and I'm up at just before 5 am. Even though we were on the go a lot I came back a lot more rested than I left!

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