Galveston & Houston Day 2

On Saturday we woke up and headed to Galveston with the family to see the sea wall at the Gulf of Mexico.

Coming in to Galveston, you could still see the destruction from Hurricane Ike - there were boats on the side of the road and piles of shingles, siding, and other rubbish. The houses weren't leveled, but looked like they needed a lot of work. Sad.

We then parked along the sea wall and headed down to the beach. There was a small drop off because the sand was washed out to sea during the Hurricane. There were crews bringing in sand to reconstruct the beach. We did find LOTS of sea shells to take home.
Maddie loved the beach - can you tell?



Here's Jeremy bottling up sand for us. This is a good shot of the small cliff of sand we had to jump off of.
Stacia brought crackers for the seagulls. Madeline held one in her hand and a gull came down and nabbed it. I tried to do the same trick, but was freaked out by the birds. It was scary to see them hovering overhead with their hungry little beaks that looked like they were ready to peck me if I showed them a cracker, plus I didn't want a "mess" on my head or shoulders.

Madeline liked drawing in the sand (as well as picking it up and throwing it into the wind, which flew right into her eyes). Here's a drawing of an "H heart".
Abbie was sleeping in the car with Brayton while Aunt Patricia watched them while we were out on the beach. Abigail woke up when we came back, so Jeremy wanted to take her onto the beach for a moment. It was a quick one as she really didn't like the sand or wind.

I thought it was pretty neat that we've driven from Fairbanks, AK all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico...it only took 7 months to make that journey :)

We brushed the kids off and headed to The Johnson Space Center just outside Houston to take a tour and let the kids play with space stuff.
We hopped on a tram that took us around the NASA campus. It was HUGE! I don't recall the acreage, but there are 200 deer that live on the grounds.
Here we are with Aunt Patricia...Madeline sure loved the tram ride!

Our first stop was mission control. This is the ACTUAL room that they use when there are space flights. They launch in Florida and control the flight in Texas - why? President L.B. Johnson (the space center's namesake) wanted to build mission control in his home state...no other reason...
Here we are viewing an exact replica of the space shuttle and parts of the international space station. It's so detailed that NASA could use it as a working laboratory. It was really cool.

Next, we headed over to see Saturn V. It's taller than Lady Liberty! Here we all are by one of the engines. This photo doesn't do it justice - it was SO MASSIVE that I couldn't fit it all in one shot.

Jeremy by one end of the Saturn V.
And we made our way through the overpriced gift shop to look for astronaut food. We found a $500 replica...yes, REPLICA...of a moon rock.

We headed back to Patricia's house for dinner and then crashed at our hotel around midnight. It was a wonderful day!