Sunday, July 21, 2024

 Sunday - late

Vacation over. Didn't post anything the entire time because we were just plain too busy. Got up at 5:15 am Friday, got the Galveston before noon.  We ate at a seafood restaurant which is on the water, there are even docking areas for boats to pull up, get out and eat. After that, over to the main strip.  Up and down there, it was pretty hot out but it was nice.  To the AirBNB house, got situation and then to the beach for a couple of hours.  Back to the house and then to a Chinese restaurant which had great food, back to the house again and then settle in for the evening.

Day 2/Saturday: I got up and made breakfast. 3 meat breakfast casserole, it was a hit.  I mean, I was glad it was a hit because the ingredients cost a bit and it took quite a while to make it.  Double recipe for 18 people. After that we were off to the beach.  I mean, we weren't there even 2 hours, tho and they wanted to go to Galveston for lunch at Rainforest Cafe.  It was great and it was fun, but I wanted to stay in the water, lol, so did most of the kids.  

In fact, I spent more time in the water than anyone, kids included.  The 9 year old was in almost as long as me, but he was getting in and out and I was just enjoying the water.  By the time we got back, there was only 2 hours of daylight left but yes, went back out into the water until sunset and then back to the house for tacos.   

This morning was probably the most interesting part as far as memories go.  Well, first off, we were all in bedrooms and I was in with other adults.  One of them snores heavily and non-stop, all night long.  Friday night to Saturday morning, I might have gotten 4 hours  of sleep, I think it was more like 3.  Last night? No thank you.  I got my ear buds out of the SUV, fully charged thankfully, looked up green noise, found one that says continuous play with black screen for 12 hours, turned that on and turned the sound up until it drowned out the sound of the unbelievably loud snoring.

It canceled it the entire time, I slept 7 hours and I felt good today.

Ok, so we got up this morning, cleaned up, packed and left by 11:00 am.  Over to the beach for one last time getting in the water. This time, it was just me and the kids and they all got out after I saw a jellyfish.  Like, run for your lives! No thanks.  Takes more that to get me out of the water, but yes, I did get out of the water after being in it for about an hour and a half.

You see, I was out there with the 9 year old, pretty far out actually, he was trying to learn how to use a wake board and I was trying to teach him. Took a while but he started getting the hang of it. At some point, I noticed this very large man attempting to get my attention.  He was yelling something and frantically waving his arms.  You don't have to yell at me very long out in the ocean, especially as far out as we were, to get my attention and get me moving.  I don't know what he was saying, but in case it was sharks, I got the boy and we moved quickly towards the man, towards the shore.  

Sure enough, 2 sharks, large fins sticking well out of the water were spotted numerous times near us and actually closer to the shore than we were!  I'm not a beach person, we go infrequently, I don't care what kind of shark it is, I don't want to be anywhere near them. I didn't panic, exactly, but I got the hell out of the water.  These people all came running up to us, sorry we did that but "the sharks seem pissed off this year biting people everywhere" I never saw them, but the man showed the size of the fins sticking out with his hands and I was decidedly not going back into the water. There was a storm coming anyway, plus it was getting late and it was just time to go.  

Over to Taylor where they were hanging out and they had seen the 2 sharks as well.  I don't have any feelings of "I could have died today" and doom and gloom, I'm just glad I don't have a limb bitten off or in a hospital somewhere.  The boy as well.  He was also done and didn't want to get back in.

Is that going to stop from ever going back into the water? Of course not.  Just nice that people were watching and actually went out of their way to get our attention and get us out of harm's way.  

Well, the adventure continued today. James and Taylor wanted to go off on their own, which was fine by me, they wanted some alone time, we were going to head home.  Just wanted to take that ferry across the bay.  On the way to the ferry point, Taylor asked if we wanted to go to that Naval Museum, I took a poll, 3-1, we one.  So, it's raining heavy, we have to drive through residential area - large one - in Galveston to get over to the road that leads to the place. 

Well, we were in  4 inches of water after turning into there, I didn't think much of it. Then 6 inches, 8 inches, then water all the way up to the step rails on my SUV.  I wanted out of there but we were already in the mess. Small cars low to the ground were getting flooded.  One car driving through it opened their doors!  I ended up getting off the road, those people were all freaking out and went down other residential streets that were completely flooded out.  What have we gotten ourselves into?  

I finally made my way out of it and to a major street where all the cars were sitting up against the center median, some cars were broken down, most of them just sitting there. I had to flip a U-ey to get out of there, but we did, indeed, make it back to the road that leads to the naval museum.  The road goes up onto an  elevated highway which takes you out of that flooded mess, I as surprised more people weren't going that way. That elevated highway takes you out of there, I guess they didn't know it was right there.  

We toured an old sub and an old warship, then headed out of there to the ferry. That highway took us there without hardly any water, a little but nothing near the extent of those residential streets.  The ferry was free, amazingly enough.  Operated by TXDOT, they have several of them moving back and forth all day long. I'd never been on one. Just drive onto it, get out once it starts moving and do some sight seeing.  

Met up with James and Taylor at a restaurant on the other side and then we parted ways. They wanted to stay and have a few drinks, I decided we wanted to go home.  The kids in full agreement, they had lots of fun but it was go, go, go the entire time and they were worn out.  Not 30 minutes later, Taylor calls asking if it would be ok if they stayed another night?  Not ready for vacation to be over and just those 2 alone, I thought that was a great idea for them so I readily agreed.  

We're home now, I'm letting the kids play video games for a bit - they weren't allowed to take them on the trip - and then they are going to bed and I'm hopefully going to get as good a night's sleep as I ever get. I can't really complain too much about last night tho, that noise "barrier" worked great and I don't wonder if I should try doing that again even at home?  I might.  There is nothing tomorrow, I have no plans to get up early for anything like we have the last 3 days.  

I wasn't paying hardly any attention to the political chaos going on right now, my mom actually contacted me via text and asked "are you watching this?".  Huh?  Biden dropped out of the race.  I'm not getting into that now, I will catch up on everything tomorrow.  I've only seen that Kamala wants the nomination, lmao, Manchin is talking about running and who knows if this might reinsert JFK into the mix?  

So that's it for now. It's late and I want to go to bed. There are details in the trip I forgot but not going to go there now, time for bed.  

 Thursday - early It's days like this when I wish I wasn't working.  I woke up a couple times last night but it was short lived and ...