Fishing

This is a fun fishing boat for tourists wanting to go out and have the experience .

These are the serious fisher man and women.  They have quite a set up. A wagon with coolers, buckets, bait, net and several poles.

 While we were eating we watched these boats come in with their catch.  Most of them brought in clams.  They were in gunny sacks, they stacked them on pallets and a fork lift picked them up and took the sacks about 1/2 block away to a place that processed them.

This is the road in front of the process building.  It is a road of shells.  Of course it smelled, what are you thinking.

 Kids may never go in the water again.  This is a Man of War Jelly Fish.  Really pretty but they do hurt ya.  We saw literally hundreds of them on the beach. Big to little.  When they have high winds here they are blown in and die.  Can't begin to tell you how many we could see in a small area.

Here you go Cambree here are the Dolphins having fun in front of a HUGE oil ship coming into the docks. Fun to watch them.

Trash on the beach, but interesting trash I thought.

When we first got down here we noticed a lot of young girls here.  They were girl scouts out for the weekend on a scouting camp out. (in RV's not tents).  One day they had a ' clean the beach' day.  So yea for the Girl Scouts.

Birds of Texas

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When I did laundrey I was never alone this small wren like bird would set in the tree across from the  laundry room and watch me.

These birds would always follow a heavy rain seeking out food.  Look at those dangerous beeks. I was setting on my couch watching them.

We were sitting inside 5 Guys eating a salad (haha) where I started watching all these birds flying in and landing on the over head wire.  Look how spaced out they are.  One would fly in and land and the others would all move over to make room.  It reminded me that we all have our "personal space".  I was fascinated by this.

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Along with the birds we enjoyed watching these bee keepers.  There were like 5 people all dressed in white with masks on they were smoking out the bees.  They were loading the boxes onto trailers and taking them away some where.  May I just say we couldn't open our car windows the bees were buzzing all around us.

Oh my gosh we thought we had found a flock of flamingos.  Started taking pictures and then realized they really were not.  These are Spoon Billed something.  They were pink bodies with white heads.  They were pretty neat looking .

 

Saw a lot of flocks flying all the time.

When the waves were so high and brought in all the sea weed the sea gulls were thick.  But they were so much fun to watch.  There little babies move so fast over the sand.

We were waiting at the dock for a fishing boat to come in with there catch for the day and this brown pelican was setting on the pier post (as they do).  I moved in to take a picture.  He just sat there posing for me.  He would keep turning so I could get different sides of him.  I was excited that I could get so close.  But, I am sure he is so use to people.

Here I think he is saying "are you through yet, I am getting hungry and ready to fly on".

Phil has signed on to go out on the fishing boat and he hopes he catches some fish so he doesn't waste his money.  Me I am kinda hoping he only catches a few.  Our freezer will only hold so much.  The catch of the day when we were watching was Red Snapper.  I was not impressed.

Hmmmm maybe we could have a fish fry for our Easter Family Dinner.

Trees and Plants of Texas

Just liked the trees lining the yard.. This old live oak tree was huge and had a limb (on the right) near the ground.  Wouldn't a picnic under this tree be great.

 So tiny and fragile looking. Yellow and Pink blossoms on same stem.

 This is for Michelle. You would have just loved this tree. The picture below is me standing underneath the tree and looking up at the sky.  I was amazed.  The trunk was hollow and so they put cement in it I guess to try to preserve it. 

 Can you see the "porch swing" hanging on the branch. Can't you just see sitting and swinging watching the water.  Actually they had it hanging facing away from the water.  Why ? Moss blowing in the wind.  Oh My.

 I just thought this was a very narley looking tree.

 

 These two pictures above are of trees that are wind swept.  It was so hard to get the real effect of it on film, so I hope you can see how they are growing naturally as the wind blew them.  There was a bay across the street. I just was so stunned by these.

These vines are growing on the sand dunes where we are camped.  It is called a Railroad Vine, Becki would just love these, there roots grow very deep (to get to the water) and they have been known to go 14" in one day. They are important here to hold the sand/soil.

House architecture on the Gulf

 Sorry I don't know anything about the above house's.  I just love the bigness, the round rooms, the heavy stones, the arches, the castle domes.  I wouldn't want to live there but I would like to know the stories behind the doors.  The above were all in Galveston.

 This is the Fulton Mansion

The Fulton Mansion was built in 1877 by George Fulton and his wife. He was an engineer and inventor as well as a rancher.  He made his fortune by Shipping hides and cattle tallow to New Orleans. This mansion is in Fulton-Rockport, Tx in the Aransas Bay.  Across the street is a beautiful bay. This house had hot and cold water, indoor plumbing, and a/c way before anyone else.  The trees, as you can see the other picture is wind blown (you will see that also in another blog on plants).

I love to just go driving through the towns to see the architecture of the area's era gone by.

January 12,2013 after Santa

This picture had to be taken.  If only I could have gotten the whole building.  The sign says COMPLETELY REMODELED   well that is not true.  This old Pizza Hut looking building was destroyed by the hurricane and hasn't been remodeled except with a few cans of spray paint for graffiti and political signs.  So funny.This was in Galveston.Now on to day tripping.  Phil first took me out to eat.  Went to Sam's.  It was a good taste day at Sam's lots of good samples.  We left full. Very cheap meal.  Then on to the shopping part.  Phil is such a big spender.  He got 2 t-shirts and wanted to buy me a purse too.

 Went to the town of  Sugar Land to see the Imperial Sugar Museum.  You can tell that the town has money.  The streets were landscaped and the malls were fantastic. The following pictures kinda says it all.  When the fast food places look more like a bank than the bank does something is wrong.

This is Dennys (Laramie you may not mind eating here now).

 This is McDonald's yep McDonald's looks pretty fancy doesn't it.  Wait until you see the Bank

This is the Bank of America.  Very plain and simple.  I liked the McDonald's building best.Just liked the name.Oh yes the sugar museum.  We never found it and was told that they are talking about making one.  Imperial Sugar company is in the process of tearing down there old buildings but the city would like to make a museum out of them.  So maybe in a few years we can go back and actually see a sugar museum.The Oakland Plantation in 1843 was the beginning of the Mill and in 1883 they were producing 600 tons of raw sugar.  1896 cane sugar refinery converted the mill's raw sugar into refined white sugar and produced 100,000 pounds per day. At the end of WWII the plant did a $4 million renovation and they then produced 2,500,000 pounds a day.  And today they do nothing here but have mills in Georgia and Louisana.  So sad to see progress sometimes.

 This picture is for Audrey.  The telephone booth reminded me of Dr Who and you.

 A man along side the road was selling these chairs and water jug holders/pourers.  We went past and Phil said he had to go back and see if they were comfortable.  He turned around and tried them out.  Didn't buy any because they were NOT comfortable but did look neat.

 Eating my corn flakes this morning I saw this bird strolling by.  I like our traveling days for the most part.  We do have a pretty good time.

Let's see what happens this week. 

Night out and Breakfast with Santa

 

We heard about this place called Hazel's in Lake Jackson and so we wanted to go try the fish there.  Well we drove down the street where it was suppose to be and didn't see it so we turned around and came back.I said hey Phil there is Asailes could that be it. Yep it was Hazel's AsailesI cannot seem to correct the above sentence so I will try and make sense of it here.  Hazel's and Asailes kinda sound alike with a Texan accent.  We laughed and felt like idiots. 

It was built in front of a sand pit and when they were digging out the sand pit they found this huge mammouth. This picture is of part of the jaw bone.  They sent it to Texas A &M to test and date it.  Yes they had good fish, well Phil said they did.

This was the music at Breakfast with Santa last Saturday.  They played Christmas music on these 55 gallon barrels and they were good.  I could have sat and listened to them all morning.

This group was the father, in the hat, and his daughter, standing next to him, and son, next to her, I don't know who the other one was. They had been doing this for the last 20 some years.

Lots of hungry kids.  Had lots of pictures with Santa.  He had lots of sticky, eggy hand prints on him when it was all over.  The mall ran out of food even.  But all had fun.