Vacation---all I ever wanted

We just got back today and all went great! I uploaded all 100+ photos to Flickr. Here a few of the highlights. We made it to Moody Gardens in Galveston and also to the indoor Schlitterbahn water park. We were at Moody Gardens all day on Thursday.

Moody Gardens is awesome! It has three huge glass pyramids. One pyramid is all aquariums. My favorite part of that was seeing a sea horse hatchery, sea horses, a sea dragon, and other creatures, I hadn't seen before---like an upside down jellyfish and pipe fish. The rain forest pyramid was pretty cool too! We saw several cool 3D or 4D IMAX shows as well and rode on a huge paddle wheel boat (see picture). It was a neat day.

We went to Schlitterbahn on Saturday and it was the best! It was really expensive to get in though. But we had a blast! It was kid friendly too.

Our beach house rental in Gilchrist, TX was decent for what we paid--which was not much. We had no phone and no internet, but we were practically on the beach. We flew kites, made sand castles, BBQ'd, walked the beach, found lots of see shells and more. The first few days the water was very choppy and the winds were 50+ gusts. After that it was not near as gusty, just normal winds of 20 mph. The temps were in the 70 to 80 degree range for highs. The last four mornings were in the 40s and 50s. Cliff's keen eyes spotted a family of porpoises near (50 or 60 feet away) the shore on Sunday morning while we were chatting on the beach with a neighbor and our kids. It was a rare and moving experience for us all.

One of my favorite adventures was going to Boy Scout Woods and Smith Oaks on High Island on Monday to see some coastal birds we didn't see at the beach. I loved the spoon bill nests and many egret nests we saw from afar. We saw one alligator while at Smith Oaks. It was a thrill to see it swimming along the marshy water. Gilchrist is near several State Parks on the coast (which we didn't go to) so we were surrounded by lots of neat birds, like terns, sandpipers, brown pelicans, and of course sea gulls. My other favorite was all the great sea food and all the rides on the Bolivar Ferry to Gilchrist from Galveston. The kids loved feeding the sea gulls from the ferry boat. It was a fun time!

We went to two restaurants on the East Galveston Bay that were off of the Bolivar Peninsula. It was all so romantic. The last night we went to Steve's Landing. We had a great time watching all the tug boats go by as we ate. The tug boats were pushing huge barges. We stayed long enough to see the sun setting. It was a beautiful night.

We are going to be heading home to Iowa soon. So we will be busy packing and saying goodbye to loved ones here in Texas over the next week.