Texas Living

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And so our adventure continues....to TEXAS!

Houston, Texas is where our next adventure begins for J's business opportunities. Of course we were pretty sad to leave the fun, beautiful, perfect weather state of Colorado. We were just having way too much fun there but the show must go on as they say. We took our first trip to Texas in August to search for apartments. We had a few areas that we wanted to look in which included the Energy Corridor, The Woodlands and Sugar Land. These we chose due to the location from the airport and where J might be conducting most of his business. The Energy Corridor was our first place to start looking and where we also stayed the first night during our search. After looking at several apartments in this area, we soon came to the conclusion that this was not the area we wanted to be in. (Except for one very beautiful apartment that was right across from the Hershey park with a large biking/walking trail). Just looking around we could tell it wasn't a very well kept area and safety was questionable. We did eat at a good restaurant called Hungry's. Real good food. The following day we headed to The Woodlands. We had heard this was a very nice area and it was. The area was full of full, tall trees, so many that you could hardly see any of the stores or homes from the road. Although the apartments were nice in this area, we realized this was just too far of a drive from the Houston area. So we headed down to Sugar Land which is SW of Houston and about 30-40 min. from the Energy Corridor. Sugar Land is actually where I was hoping we would end up just because it looked like a nice area and of course it would be so cool to say we lived in Sugar Land, right?!

Sugar Land really impressed us from the apartments, to the canopy of trees over the streets, and nearby shopping all along Hwy 6. We knew this was the area where I would feel most comfortable in as I'm not a big city kind of girl. I'm more of a suburb girl (if that's a thing). We found a beautiful apartment called Stella at Riverstone. It was in a newly developed area with a new Kroger grocery store just opening and more stores being added in the strip malls near it. Krogers was literally a walk across the street for us. Now that we had decided on an apartment, the rest of our stay in Texas was going to be having some fun by the ocean in Galveston. The DoubleTree hotel right on the beach was where we stayed for the next 2 nights. First thing we did was put our suits on and headed to the swim up pool bar and ordered some pina coladas! Unfortunately this is when things went bad. Because I love to take pictures of everything, I carelessly dropped my phone in the pool. So I was without a phone for the rest of the trip while it was soaking in rice. (thankfully it survived!!) Galveston was a really cool town with lots of history and a long stretch of beach line along the sea wall and Sea Wall Blvd. We drove from one end to the other exploring, took a dip in the ocean and drove around the town of Galveston. It was their off season since school had just started so it was pretty quiet there. Also, if you talk to the locals, they would say don't go to Galveston beaches as they are dirty but head to South Padre or Corpus Christi. They were right, it wasn't a clear blue ocean like you see in pics but it was still an ocean to us since we don't get to see an ocean very often. This was also our first ever experience being under a large pier. Pleasure Pier was also in Galveston where there was restaurants, shops and amusement rides. We had dinner at Bubba Gumps while trying to get used to the very humid climate here in Texas.

That leads me to the topic of weather in Houston. Everyone we talked to that we mentioned our move to Houston had a negative reaction to it. They all knew it was hot and humid there. Boy were we in for a change coming from dry, hot days and cool nights in Colorado to just hot and humid all day and night in Houston. The worst part is you are freezing inside from the AC and then sweating less than 5 minutes after being outside. We are still adapting to the climate and they say this is cooler for them! We actually can't wait for it to cool down a bit. We have enjoyed the beautiful pool at our apartment to cool off in but we will leave the long hikes and exploring outside to when it cools down a bit. There is a nice little nature preserve area within walking distance from us that's nice to walk around in when I need my nature fix.

Speaking of nature! There was some "nature" that somehow got into our new apartment on our first night. It was a Texas roach!!! Couldn't believe what we were seeing since we hardly had to deal with any bugs in Colorado and especially a roach!. Luckily it was the only one we have seen since and we had pest control spray the area. I was warned that the bugs were big and bad in Texas and the Texas roaches are pretty common and they don't come in multiples like a common roach. We also later discovered an ant problem so we are now battling with the ants. I do love seeing the geckos all around. They are actually really cute I think. Oh, and plenty of birds here. They hang out everywhere, even under your cars in the parking lot. They are noisy too. Haven't seen an alligator yet or an armadillo (except for a road kill one).

So far we are finding enough things to do and explore in the Houston area. The scenery may be different here but I'm trying to make the best of it and explore it. It's a very large state so there is a lot of drive time involved in getting places. The city of Houston itself is 600 sq. miles and not to mention the 4th largest city in the United States.

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