We left Sam Houston Jones State Park in Lake Charles, LA for the three hour (or so) drive to Galveston. I managed to get a last-minute campground reservation right on the beach despite it being spring break week for Houston and Galveston. During the drive, Dooder read his first book, cover to cover, all by himself. I’m so proud of him!!!!

One catch of the shortcut between Lake Charles and Galveston is that there’s no road from the Bolivar Peninsula and Route 87 to Galveston island – so we took the ferry!! Megan wasn’t so sure this was a good idea, but we had to give it a try! Yes, THIS ferry trip was MUCH better than that other one. Phew! The bus was on a boat!!

Getting to the campground was otherwise uneventful and we could see the beach and Gulf of Mexico right from our campsite. How awesome! During our stay there was an incredible amount of fog, which people there said was quite unusual. No doubt the spring breakers weren’t getting the weather they were hoping for, but it was fine with me! We enjoyed the pool and hot tub and took a walk on the beach right away since we knew we’d fill our other days with outings.

We drove down to the Pier 21 area to find a bite to eat. We decided on Joe’s Crab Shack based on our positive experience in Savannah. Yay Yay decided to be adventurous and ordered the kids steampot, which included crabs legs, shrimp, sausage, corn on the cob, and potato. I am so proud of him for trying something new and totally different!

After Joe’s we went over to the Ocean Star, which is an actual oil drilling platform that was retired from service and turned into a museum. How cool is that??!??!? I think I was probably more excited than the kids initially…

Afterwards we walked around the piers, saw a Carnival cruise ship at dock, and sat down for a happy hour beverage.

The final outing in the area was Space Center Houston at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. First we went on a tram tour of the Johnson campus. The first stop was the building made famous in the movie Apollo 13, where engineers worked with Ken Mattingly and other astronauts to solve various in-flight problems with the capsule and lunar modules mock-ups. On our visit we got to see full size complete mock-ups of the International Space Station, a Russian Soyuz, and NASA’s Orion capsule. There were other smaller projects in the building, including some robots.

The second stop was to see the Saturn V rocket. This is the only complete Saturn V rocket in the world, made up of modules from the cancelled Apollo 18 and 20 missions. It is massive!

Being spring break week, there were extra activities for the kids.

We picked up some astronaut ice cream in the gift shop on the way out of the museum at closing time. By the end of the day we were all exhausted and couldn’t wait to get home, eat, and go to bed.