Statue commemorating the hurricane of 1900 that destroyed Galveston
Walking out to the end of one of the "wave breakers"
There's a lot of seaweed on the Galveston beaches
Katie's Seafood Market
Schlitterbahn Water Park
Setting up the tent in Galveston Island State Park
With help some from very friendly neighbors
We did it!
Hot dogs
and marshmallows
Catching crabs on the beachThursday May 29
We took a drive along the beach and stopped to walk out onto one of the many "wave breakers", which are long rock walls that extend from the shore. They're spaced every quarter a mile or so along the seawall that protects the city of Galveston. We talked to a life guard who was positioned near the wave breaker. She said that the breakers don't really do the job they were intended for, but they do create riptides, which explains why there were lifeguards posted near each breaker.
The Galveston seawall is an impressive feat of engineering. We saw a movie about the hurricane of 1900 that destroyed Galveston and is still the deadliest natural disaster in US history. In the movie they talked about how, after the hurricane, the seawall project was undertaken and the city of Galveston was raised, I believe almost 10 feet. The wall has been tested on a number of occasions since then and has done its job protecting the city.
We saw the "Great Storm" movie and another movie about the pirate, Jean Laffite, on the waterfront at the Pier21 Theater. We also enjoyed seeing all the fresh seafood at "Katie's Seafood Market".
It seems that most of the visitors to Galveston go to the city beach areas where a small fee is charged. The city grooms the beaches, which is very important because Galveston gets so much seaweed. We heard that there was a huge seaweed area off of the Texas coast and when clumps of the seaweed break free the natural currents bring the seaweed to the Texas beaches. Besides, the seaweed the sand is more like mud.
In the afternoon, we went to the Schlitterbahn water park. We only took a couple pictures as carrying a camera around at a water park is a pain. The kids had a great time and welcomed the break from "learning" about things.
After the water park we drove to "Galveston Island State Park" to see about possibly camping there for the night. It turned out that there were plenty of spots for that night, but everything was booked for the weekend. We heard from other campers who said that they had booked up to a year in advance. Lucky for us we were able to get right in.
We drove up to our campsite to find a fire going and some kids milling around. They immediately began to holler for their dad. It turned out that they didn't think anyone was going to be using the campsite so they were planning to use our fire pit since the campsites immediately next to the beach did not have fire pits.
We told them that it was no problem and chit chatted. It wasn't long before we had all kinds of friends. There was a nice couple from Louisiana, a family from Colorado, and another from Missouri. They all helped us set up our tent and allowed us to borrow some industrial size tent stakes after seeing that ours would not last the night in the beach wind. We had planned to get the tent set up and then go to dinner, but the boys jumped right in and started grilling hot dogs. So we had hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner.
It was a beautiful evening and everyone was so nice. It was a very communal feeling. The kids had blast. They all ran off to the beach when it got dark to hunt for crabs by flashlight. We sat around the campfire and talked with everyone well into the night. It was a great experience - the kind of experience we were hoping for when we planned the trip.
Overall, Galveston was kind of a mix for us. The state park was nice, but Galveston definitely didn't give off a "resort" feeling. There area is quite populated being that it is so near Houston and the tourist areas are more medium to low end. There's also quite a bit of port activity and industrialized areas that give the city a "workmanlike" feel.
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