Galveston Oh Galveston

With the shorter days and lots of rain this is what some of our bicycle rides look like and have taken place in the garage. On the bright side it's safer and no helmet required, it also stirs up more of our addiction to travel.

Galveston Island has always been a place I like to visit, sometimes a little seedy but you have to like a place with a newspaper named the Twisted Parrot. Michele and I loaded up the camping trailer and took off for three days to see how things are in the wake of last year's hurricane.

" Sippin" on the dock of the bay is where we spent Saturday after a morning bike ride along the bay and on the hard packed sand of the gulf beach. The event was a wine and food festival that was our first of this kind, we sampled some of over 60 wines and lots of cheese, pasta, cured meats, and a really good Blues band. The event was hosted by the South Shore Harbor and this is a really nice upscale Marina, I could see us living on a sailboat here (not gonna happen).

The State Park is where we stayed and we met a nice couple retiring in a few months to travel full time in their 5th wheel travel trailer. The park is still suffering from the damage inflicted by hurricane Ike and was not exactly what we were expecting, but the ocean is still the same. This was sprockets first trip to the beach and he loved it, he wore himself out chasing gulls and investigating all that the sea washed up.

The Island itself is recovering from a lot of damage and the beachfront homes look nice since most of them have been repaired and have fresh paint and roofs, of course a lot of them are missing too.

I had one of my best runs ever when I did 6 miles from our campsite to the beach and watched the sun rise over the Gulf as I ran along the waters edge and had the place to myself. The hard packed sand is a perfect surface to run on.

The rain and shorter days has limited our cycling somewhat but last night we started our night ride season with the bicycle club and had a nice hard ride, much nicer than riding the trainer.

Dennis