Texas Trip - Houston

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Maggie and I are exploring south Texas and we are just finishing up our visit to Houston. The weather is hot and humid, but there is air conditioning everywhere, so we have not been uncomfortable. It is a bit of a surprise, though, every time I go outside and am hit with the wave of heat. Highlights of our trip include going to Galveston (less than an hour drive from Houston and located right on the Gulf of Mexico). We took a ferry from Galveston Island to Port Bolivar and enjoyed seeing the bird life, dolphins, and large ships plying the waters to get to the ports of Houston and Galveston. (See photo of Maggie with ferry in background.) Another day we stopped in at a rather unique museum, the National Funeral Museum. It is surprisingly well done with displays about embalming and coffin making, among others. The is a mock up of Abraham Lincoln's coffin (see photo - sorry, I can't get it rotated properly so you'll have to squint and turn your head sideways! ) and there is a large collection of American hearses from various eras (see photo). The Houston Museum of Natural Sciences is the best I can ever remember seeing, and I have been to quite a few around the English–speaking world. Particularly strong is the Paleontolgy section which includes many life-size skeletons of dinosaurs (see photo). Probably the chief reason we came to Houston was to visit the Space Center Houston. It is the museum that is next door to the Johnson Space Center. We were there today and got to see the actual room used for mission control during the Apollo flights as well as space capsules and other artifacts from NASA. A new addition to the facility is a retired space shuttle piggy-backed on a 747 (see photo). Maggie and I are enjoying a relaxing schedule and I will write more as we visit more destinations.

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