Galveston, oh Galveston

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Geo: 29.2953, -94.8079

What a surprisingly delightful day! Not that I'm truly surprised we had fun because we always do, but surprised because it was an unusual sort of day and everything was fun.

We began by getting up just in time for our free Holiday Inn Express breakfast - why does breakfast have to end so early - 9:30am? Sheesh, but it got us up and moving.

Today we drove to Galveston, TX with a couple of ideas in mind. We arrived at the Texas Maritime Museum area roughly four minutes before one of their scheduled "Harbor Tour/Dolphin Watching" tours. Great timing! We got on the boat and went up to the top deck. Soon we were trailing a shrimper and sure enough there were dolphins. I guess they like what gets caught up in the nets. After watching those dolphins for a bit, we chugged further out into the bay, past an old tanker that had been scuttered and now amongst the rust looked like a golf course.
On a bit further the weather started to get foggy and out of the mist loomed a cruise ship. It was eerie! Eventually we turned back to port and saw several more pods of dolphins. I was happy to see them because they were out doing "dolphin stuff" and not trailing a shrimper. Just by happenstance I managed to get a photo of two of them as they surfaced.

After disembarking the tour boat we picked up audio tours and maps of the Elissa at the Texas Maritime Museum.

The Elissa is a four square Iron Baroque sailing ship that was built in 1877 - rescued from time and the elements and brought back to life by the Galveston Historical Preservation group. Elissa is the official Tall Ship of Texas and has, at least once (in 2000?), participated in the parade of tall ships in NY. There are only two other ships of this type in existence.
The audio tour was wonderful - fun and educational! Some vacation. Hahaha

Below are a few photos of the ship. The Elissa was known as a "tramp" ship because her sole purpose was to move cargo. She would have cargo to be delivered to Port X and when that cargo was unloaded, if there wasn't any cargo to go anywhere else the ship's Captain would go around town to business to see what he could find that needed to be delivered. In her heyday, the Elissa was only in Galveston twice but now she is welcomed "home".
Okay - who knows the answer to this question: "in 1911, Galveston exported more of THIS than any other American city?"

We enjoyed touring and learning about the Elissa very much and spent at least two hours reading the historical placards and roaming the ship. The people in the museum probably thought we had made off with their little audio doo-dads. But time to move on...

We stopped to see the markers of historical floods that have hit Galveston. Jeff could not reach the marker for the 1900 hurricane - in fact it isn't even in the photo. Over 6,000 people lost their lives in Galveston in that hurricane. Cue the Glen Campbell song...

It was about 2:30 when we left the Maritime Museum to have lunch. We ate at Fisherman's Wharf restaurant sitting out on their deck over the water. We both had salads with shrimp - maybe the same shrimp we had seen being caught earlier.
After our leisurely lunch we took a short walk to the fresh fish market that the boat captain had pointed out to us this morning. Fishing boats had been unloading their catches when we had sailed past.
There are a couple of photos (red snapper and shrimp) below. Be happy that this not a scratch and sniff blog!

Okay, time for a confession. I had NO idea that Galveston is an island! How did I learn this exciting geographic fact? Well, I was clued in when Jeff suggested we take a ferry to Bolivar peninsula. What?? Okey dokey - that explains the car ferries I had seen throughout the day. Always up for an adventure we drove down "Ferry Road" and joined the queue for driving on. There were also several pedestrians and a bicyclist. I was reminded of the last time I had been on a car ferry - with my wonderful friends, Eve and Leroy Measner and Mary Linscome when we were in Turkey.
The ferry was fun and there are a few photos below. What did we do when we got to Bolivar? We took a short walk. The side profile photo of Jeff below was taken as we walked along a rocky jetty. Then we got back in the car to go back the Galveston ISLAND. The way back was very different - the weather had changed a bit - it was windy, chilly and very foggy. The pilot kept blowing the ferry's horn which he hadn't done at all on our initial crossing.

A fun day in Galveston!
Here we are back in La Porte, TX looking forward to a new day of exploring tomorrow.

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Comments

[Tom]

Now I want shrimp!!!!!