Road Trip 2008: Day 6 of 17 (Baton Rouge\Texas)

Baton Rouge to Galveston

Satellite view

Showing the boys where we've been and where we're going

Korean War memorial

USS Kidd

Nice view of the river front in Baton Rouge

The old Capitol in Baton Rouge

Elegant roof top getaway outside the Tsunami sushi bar

It wasn't long before we saw our first oil well in Texas

Wednesday May 28

We had a nice breakfast at the Sheraton, but we were disappointed that it wasn't free. It was definitely a nice buffet, but we were spoiled by the lesser hotels that had free continental breakfasts.

We planned on going for a "quick walk" on the Mississippi river front in Baton Rouge before heading for Galveston. Of course, the "quick walk" turned into most of the day. We started by checking out the USS Kidd museum. We didn't actually board the ship since we had already taken a long tour of the USS Alabama in Mobile. Who knew that every city would have a ship museum?

We walked along the river front and out onto the pier. We went in the children's museum and checked out the gift shop. We did that a lot on the trip - walk in and check out whatever we could for free without actually paying for the main attraction.

The old Capitol building is across the street and is very beautiful. There were a number of exhibits inside the Capitol that we enjoyed.

We walked across the street to check out the Tsunami sushi bar on Katie's recommendation. It's a roof top restaurant with a nice view. It was a nice place to relax and have some snacks.

Early on in the trip the boys kept saying they were hungry for lunch, but we would always eat these big breakfasts so I would push to skip lunch. It took a few days, but the rest of the family seemed to be getting used to my meal schedule and joked that they better fill up at breakfast because Daddy wasn't going to feed them for a long time. Usually, we would eat these big free breakfasts at the hotel and then have a mid-day snack and an early evening dinner. Not only was it less expensive and less fattening to only eat two meals a day, but it also saved time. It could have taken another couple hours out of each day to get a consensus on where everyone wanted to eat, get to the lunch location, and then actually eat. One of the great things about breakfast, besides being free, was that we didn't have to figure out where to eat and there were always enough choices to satisfy everyone.

We left Baton Rouge much later than we had planned and headed for Galveston. We managed to make it to the Texas line and the visitor center just before it closed. We picked up a bunch of information and learned that the state operated a free 24 hour ferry from Port Bolivar to Galveston. We wanted to travel along the coast, but weren't sure how we would get across Goat Island to Galveston Island. With the information about the ferry we headed south for the coast.

We drove through lots of cute towns and across Goat Island, which was surprisingly undeveloped. We were expecting development similar to Florida. One interesting thing was that a lot of the houses were on stilts including the air conditioners. It was strange seeing all the elevated air conditioners.

We ate dinner at nice road side restaurant in Crystal Beach. There looked to be plenty of locals eating and the restaurant had all these cute signs with all kinds of down home sayings. We all had fun reading them and laughing. The food was really good as well, but the wait staff was terrible. The two waitresses we had acted like they were doing us a favor by waiting on us. The atmosphere was all fun and these waitresses were really ruining our experience. Sometimes we have these experiences that leave us wondering - was it us? We generally think we're a nice pleasant family - just the kind of family that anyone would appreciate, but sometimes it's like the twilight zone.

At the end of Goat Island we reached Port Bolivar where we caught the ferry over to Galveston. Derek got a bad headache after dinner and thought he was going to throw up, so he spent some time holding a barf bag before finally falling asleep just as we boarded the ferry. He woke up on the other side wondering when we were going to get on the ferry. It was dark by then so we didn't see much, other than Galveston all lit up.

We rode along the beach front in Galveston checking out the area. It was late and everyone was tired. We eventually settled on the Best Western to stay the night.