We were on the road again today. We pulled out of the TT Lake Conroe facility and headed northeast. We did have to start north on I-45 but after 20 miles we turned east and spent the rest of the drive on Texas back roads which are our preferred routes. We drove through the Davy Crockett National Forest and a variety of tiny towns before getting to the western side of Nacogdoches which is pronounced like something.
We skirted Nacogdoches on a beltway road and exited going north, then east, for about half an hour before arriving at Lake Tonkawa Springs Resort. It isn’t really a resort but it does have full hookups, large spaces, a laundry and wifi. Here we found there is a big flock of peahens who charge around the campground like fast bowling balls with little tiny heads. They are quite fast although they don’t seem to be skilled at navigation because sometimes they run in a big circle before charging off in another direction. There are a couple of very showy peacocks, too. They don’t seem to run around like the hens. Maybe it is because they are toting their magnificent tails about.
There is a herd of deer here. They do not look like the deer we normally see in the west. Some of the deer have very dark, almost black hides, about half are the color of a golden lab and a few have spots although I do not think they are fawns unless they were dosed with deer growth hormone when they were small. All of their tails are black. They are very shy.
Peggy was a real trooper today; she did our laundry while I watched the peahens and deer.
We snapped a picture of Steven Austin and some wildlife that you can see if you click here

Last evening the wind started to blow enough to make our normally stable trailer quiver. The wind speed increased this morning and by dawn the breeze was stiff enough to knock down my patriotic neighbors spiffy flagpole. It missed our trailer.
By the time the sun started making it a bit lighter, some rain started to fall. By 0830, it was raining so hard that we could not see through the windows so we lit up Weather Underground which told us we were in a tornado watch area and we should consider finding shelter more substantial than a fiberglass box. Surprisingly, our satellite antenna was still functioning so we turned on local news who confirmed that the weather was going to get worse before it got better. Much lightning, thunder, water and deepening darkness ensued. Then, without damaging any of our stuff, the thunderstorm passed and light came back into the world. During the height of the nastiness, our satellite dish lost all signals but quickly came back on once the scary stuff passed over. By noon it was breaking up and Peggy decided it was a good time for a trip to a store called Soft Surroundings which sells nifty lady stuff.
We drove about 20 miles down the road and started slowly circling an enormous shopping mall in an attempt to find parking within two miles of the target. Soon we were in the store and Peggy was happily browsing among the racks while I oozed outside to sit on a bench and watch Texans strut their stuff. Without losing too much money, Peg found what she wanted and was merciful by allowing us to leave without going in any other stores. I was proud of her.

There was no exploring today. We spent a good part of the day making reservations for an RV space at our next few destinations. It is tedious, frustrating work. RV park offices rarely answer their phones because, invariably, we choose to call during their frequent but erratic closures. It is random – every office is different. It’s a challenge.

Today we got to travel back into Houston to visit one of our favorite museums – The Houston Museum of Natural Sciences. We started by driving down a remarkably congestion-free I-45 into the city which is about an hour south of where we are staying at Lake Conroe. Texas freeways are very circuitous with big parallel frontage roads such that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the freeway from the frontage. We were fortunate and got on the freeway on the first try.
We finally arrived in the neighborhood where the Museum is located and drove around the block a bit before noticing there was a parking structure for Museum patrons that cost $5 to park for the day. It was only when we got closer to the parking structure entrance that we noted the sign stated the $5 parking was only for Museum members and mere peons have to cough up $20. We went in anyway. The clearance was barely adequate for us to drive our F-250 inside and we brushed the antenna on many of the concrete support beams inside but, fortunately, no roof scraping was encountered.
We took the elevator down 5 floors and entered the Museum at a cost of $25 a head. The Museum is magnificent. They have a giant section with dinosaur skeletons, a spectacular mineral and gem hall, a big section of Egyptian antiquities, a section about Texas mapmaking, a great exhibit with operating model trains, a big display of seashells, another section with ammonites (big colorful prehistoric sea snails) and trilobites, a Foucault pendulum, extensive displays of dead, stuffed Texas wildlife, another section with stuffed African wildlife, a large display of Early American History, an entire hall donated to Amazon rain forest and a nifty museum store. My feet crapped out before we could see it all but we did a pretty good job.
On the way home, I-45 was not the tranquil highway we traveled down on the way into the city. To make things worse, I blooped the navigation and we explored a bit of I-10 that we did not intend to see. Ultimately we made it back to Lake Conroe and I made some curry for Peggy to make up for my lousy navigation.
We had another one of the gorgeous Texas sunsets today.
We took a few pix at the museum and you can see some of them if you click here

We were obliged to take care of some stuff today so there was no exploring. We were productive, however, knocking out a trip to Trader Joe’s, Costco, a liquor store and a fuel stop. We hauled all our loot home and stowed as much as possible in cupboards but some ended up on the trailer floor under the table. We are well-stocked.
We purchased internet access for the time we are staying, took showers and drank some tequila. An all-around successful day. Boring, though.

Today was a travel day so we picked up our stuff and left the Sandpiper RV Resort in Galveston headed north away from the Gulf of Mexico. We were soon on I-45 headed for Willis, Texas, which is about an hour north of Houston. Traffic was frightening in Houston, at least for old codgers like me. Almost everyone was driving faster than us. I was foolish and drove the speed limit.
Houston drivers seem to fall into two categories. The first category are those that drive sinuous, serpentine paths while being preoccupied with texting and talking on the phone. This category of folks do not use their turn signals. The second category drives too fast while texting and chatting on the phone and they leave one turn signal on continuously. There is a lot of highway construction or destruction in the Houston area so the result is a free-for-all with many near misses and close calls.
We eventually exited the nightmarish metropolitan area and continued north on I-45 until we pulled off in Willis and drove to the Thousand Trails Lake Conroe facility. We had a reservation which was fortunate because, despite this place being enormous, it was also nearly full and we may have snagged the last available back-in space. Lake Conroe TT has full hookups, large spaces, pay-as-you-go wifi and the big lake adjacent to the campground. This is our first time in this TT facility.

Across a causeway from Galveston lies Pelican Island, home to a branch of Texas A & M, Seawolf Park and many oil production support facilities.
The Texas A & M facilities are very tidy. There are docks at the edge of the campus where research and oil support vessels are moored. We spotted many ROTC or naval personnel strolling between classes. They look very young.
Most of the remainder of the inhabited part of the island is dedicated to oil production facilities. There are numerous oil platforms that are not currently drilling tied up along Galveston Bay. They are huge. There are some massive rigs which appear to be secured in place when drilling solely by an array of anchors. Other rigs have elaborate spud arrangements so they can be floated into place where they lower the the spuds through the rig superstructure all the way to the seafloor and then jack the rig up into the air for drilling operations. The rigs must be enormously expensive because millions of dollars worth of cranes and other equipment is secured to the rigs and that’s only the stuff visible from the outside.
On the way home, we found two adjacent fresh seafood markets in an obscure portion of the waterfront. On the left was Samson’s and on the right was Katie’s. They are so close together that the only thing that seems to separate the two markets is some corrugated sheet metal. We did not want to favor one market over the other so Peggy went into Samson’s and bought a bunch of corpulent shrimp (is that an oxymoron?) while I was next door purchasing wahoo steaks and scallops. About $50 later, we jumped back into the truck but we could easily have spent about four times as much in these markets purchasing a whole bunch of their tasty-looking seafood. The RV freezer got filled up today. Neither store had a plastic de-veiner for shrimp so Peggy generously processed the chubby little guys with a sharp knife and fingers. Shrimp Scampi for dinner tonight.
We curtailed our exploring early today so we could go home and relax before our travel day tomorrow. We did take a stroll down to the beach behind our RV park so Peggy could get her shoes wet in the Gulf of Mexico. Peggy also forged on and went to a nearby Schlotsky’s where they had Cinnabon rolls but no bagels. If there was ever a proper name for a place that sells bagels, it seems Schlotsky’s would fit the bill.
We shot a few pix. You can see some of them if you click here

I started the day by dumping our waste tanks. After all the bad stuff had gone down the sewer hookup, I did my usual pipe washing routine when I spotted some alarming defects in our 3 year old sewer hose. After that, the first item on today’s agenda was to find an RV parts store and replace the soon-to-be-embarrassing-if-not-replaced defective parts. We headed to a place called Ron Hoover RV & Marine here on Galveston Island where we soon found the name should be Ron Hoover Marine because they had no RV supplies. A nice guy at the desk told me that Ron Hoover has two locations and only 10 miles away was Ron Hoover RV & no boats. $50 later, we were out the door with a new 20′ system just like the one I am replacing.
A couple years ago we passed through this area and stopped at a Galveston landmark, the Moody Mansion. The folks operating the place at that time only offered accompanied tours a couple times a day and it did not work out with our schedule. Now we are back in Galveston with ample fooling around time so we drove over and walked up to the admission stand which is located in the adjacent garage. Now the Mansion has self-guided tours with little electronic doodads that explain what you are looking at when appropriate.
The Moody family seemed to own a good bit of Galveston with interests in cotton, shipping, insurance and banking along with most of the other really profitable businesses in town. They accumulated considerable wealth and bought the Mansion from a lady named Willis who started building in 1895. In 1900, the Moody family moved in for an eighty year stay.
The Mansion is pretty impressive from the outside. Exterior walls are built from limestone block and clay brick. Interior walls are mostly beautiful woodwork with a considerable amount of casing and molding around everything. The walls in a couple downstairs rooms are padded fabrics with ornate designs. The main bathrooms even have bidets in addition to toilets, massive cast iron tubs and showers and marble sinks. There are whistle tubes to communicate with the butler’s pantry, an elevator, a dumbwaiter and both gas and electric lighting. The bedrooms are spacious. One bedroom even has a big tub across from the bed. The dining room is particularly opulent with amazing woodwork on floors, walls, doors, windows and the ceiling. These folks had a nice house.
There are about 30 rooms you can wander through on the first and second floors. The basement and third floor are not open to the public. I understand the third floor was never really completed on the interior and was not really used by the residents. There was ample living space for a big family using just the first and second floors. The basement must have housed the kitchen at one time because there is a dumbwaiter in the butler’s pantry that only goes down. The house must have had a great architect because the systems were state-of-the-art for 1900. Two furnaces in the basement (coal and wood), central ventilation, central heating, electrical and gas distribution and full water and sewer plumbing are installed in addition to the whistle tube system. The occupants must have been comfy.
The Moody Mansion is on Broadway/J Street/IH-45 at 27th right in the middle of town. Entry fee is $12 a head.
A few pix of the house can be seen if you click here

After yesterday being spent in the city, we elected to go off into nature today. Not far from our RV park is another free State of Texas ferry that will allow everyone except those with fuel cans in their vehicles to board and ride across the busy shipping lane leading from the Gulf of Mexico to Galveston Bay. We are staying on the Galveston side but not 20 minutes after we boarded we were driving off the ferry onto the Bolivar Peninsula.
Bolivar Peninsula is actually a long sand bar between the Bay and the Gulf. We drove east on TX-87 through some little shoreline communities where most of the houses are built up off the ground atop columns, some of them more than 20′ high. Must flood around there. About 50 miles later, we turned off on some side roads to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge.
Anahuac sits in the middle of an enormous flat area and is riddled with ponds and waterways. The water here must be full of tasty stuff to eat because thousands of wading birds, ducks, geese, cormorants, coots, roseate spoonbills, turtles, gallinules, ospreys, songbirds and alligators all were busy feeding. There is a great loop drive around a big marsh called Shoveler Pond and we liked the scenery so much we circled it twice.
By the time we were done exploring, it was late afternoon so we headed the 60 miles back to the ferry but not before spotting a big group of javelinas grazing in some farmer’s field. When we stopped to take pictures, they bolted for the brush. The ride on the ferry was enhanced by the addition of another fabulous Texas sunset. The sunrises and sunsets here in Texas have been stunning.
For some birdy and ferry pix, click here

Peggy had the choice of where to go today and she chose downtown Galveston. We began our drive by going to the furthest northeast point of Galveston Island and gazing out over the shipping channel that leads from the Gulf of Mexico into Galveston Bay, Trinity Bay and up into the Houston area. Many anchored and some moving freighters in addition to a monster dredge were spotted. The dredge seems to be clearing out the sand from the channel bottom and piping the spoil over to the beach along Galveston’s Seawall and Pleasure Pier shoreline a few miles west.
We soon retraced our steps back into the city of Galveston and took a long cruise down Seawall Boulevard which has many businesses and hotels on one side and the Seawall, the Pleasure Pier and the Gulf on the other. Near the pier we found the business end of the dredge pipeline where many pieces of equipment toiled to distribute the spoil onto the beach. They had to work fast because the pipe was spewing out enormous volumes of wet sand in a continuous stream.
Along the way we spotted the Gumbo Diner and their sign touting their beignets, basically really tasty pieces of fried dough with powdered sugar on top. Once inside, I noted they also serve chicken fried steak which I am on a quest to find the finest example. It ain’t at the Gumbo Diner but their garlic mashed potatoes, fries and fish were very tasty. The beignets were also pretty tasty but I am quite sure they are bad for me and maybe everyone.
Since Peggy was driving, we then started a chaotic but rewarding amble through many Galveston streets, admiring the spectacular architecture of the buildings in this little coastal town. There must be 1000 really gorgeous houses in superb shape and probably twice that number that are, sadly, deteriorating. Although most of the residential structures are two-story rectangles, the architectural wizardry used to make each one unique is astounding. There must have been a plentiful supply of good architects here in the early 20th century.
Seawall and house pix can be seen if you click here