Galveston, oh, Galveston – Galveston, TX [March 22-26, 2017]

On the beach at Galveston, Texas!!!

Galveston is an island, a town, a bay, and an “island time” state of mind.  It is a welcoming beach town; less schlocky and cleaner than most of the big beach towns we have visited.  It has a really interesting history, and resides next to a very industrial, petrochemical presence on neighboring islands and coastlines around Galveston Bay.

Tiki, after a swim

Portugese-Man-of-War jellyfish.

We started our stay at the beach, natch!  Our campground adjoined Stewart Beach, a wide, long public beach that was relatively empty on weekdays and wall-to-wall people on the weekend.  The sand here is very fine, powdery, brown sand.  The slope of the beach is very shallow, and the water is very shallow for a long way off the beach.  Consequently, there is a long area of waves off from the shore.  The water turns a muddy brown color as the waves pick up the fine brown sand.  It was warm and windy while we were there, warm enough to wear shorts but too windy for us to swim comfortably.  Tiki was not bothered by the wind, and swam every morning on our morning walks.

Part of The Strand

These deep curbs allow for run-off during big storms.

You may have heard about the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, described in the 2000 best-selling book Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson.  This tragic storm flooded the island, washed away most of the buildings and killed thousands of people.  It is still the greatest U.S. natural disaster of all time, even worse than Katrina. At the time, Galveston was Texas’ most prominent deep water port.  It was an international port of trade and an entry point for immigrants.  The town had great wealth.  After the storm, the town built a seawall to protect it, and raised the elevation of the town by several feet.  However, it never returned to its former wealth and stature as a great port city.  Neighboring Houston took most of that traffic and prestige.  A few of the sturdiest stone buildings from that time remain.  Some of the others are in the old commercial district called The Strand.  Eight years ago, Galveston took a direct hit with Hurricane Ike and most of the homes were inundated with feet of water.  However, the seawall held, and more modern emergency procedures were followed, and the town did not repeat the tragedy of the 1900 storm.

The Bishop's Palace

Inside the Bishop's Palace

We visited the Bishop's Palace, an ornate Victorian home completed in 1893 for the wealthy Gresham family and used for 40 years starting in 1923 as the residence of the Catholic Bishop of Galveston.  It is one of the few buildings to survive the 1900 Hurricane.  The house is beautiful, full of amazing wood floors, marble fireplaces, and tall windows, some of them stained glass.

Oil rig museum - the Ocean Star

This is used to transport workers from the rig to a boat to return to shore and vice versa.

Oil drilling stuff across Galveston Harbor from the Ocean Star

We also visited a retired oil rig that has been set up in Galveston harbor as a museum about the offshore oil drilling industry.  We learned many things about the different kinds of rigs, and the different ways that the oil is transported from the well to the mainland for processing and distribution.  The museum unabashedly promotes the interests of the petrochemical industries.  None-the-less, it was kind of cool to be moving around on a real oil rig, and going out on the decks.

The Historic Galveston Pleasure Pier

On the Ferris Wheel

View across the island from the Ferris Wheel - do you see the cruise ship in the harbor?

Galveston is working hard to make itself a desirable beach destination.  They are renewing some of the beaches with sand pumped from a sandbar out in the Gulf.  They have a convention center and have attracted well-known restaurants to the island to supplement the local restaurants.  They also restored the Historic Galveston Pleasure Pier with amusement park rides and activities on the pier out over the water.  We rode the Ferris Wheel and had a gorgeous view of the coastline and the town.

White pelicans in Galveston Harbor - the last time we saw these guys was in the Northwest Angle of Minnesota in July.

We spent most of our time in the more developed northern part of the island.  As we were leaving, we followed the island south, stopping to have lunch at lovely Galveston Island State Park.

Visiting Louisiana’s Capitol – Baton Rouge LA [March 21,2017]

Baton Rouge is the capitol of Louisiana.  It is a moderately sized city along the banks of the Mississippi River.  It is a deep water port and has oil refineries along the banks of the river.  It is also the home of LSU.  We had been recommended to go visit the state capitol building, so we did.  It was beautiful and very interesting.

Huey Long is a name from history.  He was a very young governor of Louisiana, and then moved on to the U.S. Senate.  He is presented as being an advocate of the poor during the Great Depression, and a big supporter of the New Deal and FDR.  In 1930, Governor Long convinced the state legislature that a new capitol building would ultimately save the state money with the new efficiencies of a modern building.  The 34 story, 450 feet tall building was built in just 14 months and cost only $5 million.  It is the tallest State Capitol building.

Louisiana Senate

Louisiana House of Representatives

The building is considered an example of Art Deco Architecture that was in vogue at the time.  The enormous central hall has murals over the doorways to the Senate and House of Representatives.  Massive brass chandeliers hang from the ceiling.  The Senate and House chambers are spacious and elegant, lit by large windows.  There are marvelous brass grills over the heat registers with stylized representations of the pelican, the Louisiana state bird.  Alligators peek out through foliage on the column capitals.

The Capitol grounds, the small rectangular structure is the Civil War Armory

Barge on the Mississippi

Petrochemical industry

On the 27^th floor you can visit an observation gallery that goes around the outside of the tower.  You have a tremendous view of the Mississippi River.  On the grounds are two Civil War era buildings, an old arsenal and the Old Pentagon Barracks.  There are only 4 sides to the barracks, the 5^th side opens to a view of the River.

The Pentagon Barracks

Bullet hole in the column

For the more salacious visitor, Huey Long was assassinated in the corridors of the Capitol building at the age of 37.  You can see a bullet hole in one of the marble columns from the fire fight that killed his assailant.  There is a display showing news articles of the time, and a drawing of the assassination.

1 step for each of the 48 steps, the original 13 are together in the first flight.

Baton Rouge has a paved walkway along the levee along the river.  It gives a nice view of the mighty Mississippi.  Nearby is the "Old" State Capitol Building, a remarkable castle-like structure.  It has recently been restored, by the time we got there it was closed so we couldn't visit inside it.

Old State Capitol

We don’t usually blog about where we stayed, but in Baton Rouge we stayed at the Farr Equestrian Park and Campground, a horse riding center run by the city recreation department.  It is near LSU, and must be packed for the big football games.  For us, it was a gentle, pastoral setting with horses munching away on green, green grass outside of our windows.

The view from our window