Galveston day 2 was a beach day. I began my morning as I always do when I'm on vacation - by waking up freakishly early. My eyes popped open at 5:20 am...so I forced myself to close them again and when I woke up thinking surely an hour had passed, it was 5:40 am. So I laid in the bed and played on my phone until a little after 6:00, and then got up and put on my workout clothes and went for a 3.1 mile run. It was a gorgeous morning - in the 70s, I got to watch a beautiful sunset while I was out, and I broke a great sweat.
We loaded up our beach goodies and headed out the door around 11ish (these folks I'm traveling with do not get up early, like, ever). We went to the East Beach for the day and set up camp. Yiayia loaned us a beach umbrella she had never used and it turned out to be the best thing we had all day! We were thankful for some shade and that we didn't have to pay a ton o rent one of the umbrellas already on the beach.
Kate and Trey began the day by digging in the sand with every beach toy imaginable. We had a whole pile, but despite the fancy molds (which none of us know how to use properly - how do you get the sand out??) they just ended up digging a big hole and filling it with water. I even tried to build a castle with Kate. We started by carving out our moat and then when I started to build the towers with our fancy plastic tower mold, I couldn't get the sand to release from the mold. So I basically built a big square and Kate filled it with water too.
Sand play lasted maybe 45 minutes before Kate decided to venture out into the surf. The waves were actually very calm - there were times that the ocean looked no worse than a lake, so there were no big scary waves crashing into the shore. We put on Kate's life jacket and she pretty much spent the rest of the day bobbing up and down in the surf with everyone else. She had a blast, and despite the fact that we were at the beach for over 4 hours she wasn't ready to leave.
Me? I dug my square, played in the surf for about 30 minutes, and I was pretty much satisfied and could have gone back to the room, showered, and found something else to do with the rest of my day. I personally find the beach a tad boring. I mean, you basically sit there and stare at each other all afternoon. I made the best of it and we all sat out in the water and talked and watched a big storm on the west end of the island move out to sea, but really, I would rather have been exploring the city or finding a museum or shopping. Eventually I got really tired of bobbing in the nasty water so I went up on the sand and laid on a towel under the umbrella for a while and just listened to the waves. That was pretty nice, I'll admit, and since I had been awake since 5:20 I also needed a little rest time.
We left the beach around 4:30 and headed over to the ferry to cross over to Bolivar Peninsula. It's free, so why not? Kate loved being on the ferry and we climbed up to one of the deck's to search for dolphins. We saw several, as well as huge cargo ships up close. Over in Bolivar we explored Fort Travis Seashore Park for a little bit. There are still several bunkers and remnants of the fort around, and it has great views of the bay. We headed back across on the ferry after that, this time standing on the front edge and saw even more dolphin this trip. By now it was sunset, so we had a great view of that on water.
Domino's Pizza cooked dinner for us last night, because no one was in the mood to go eat anywhere by the time we finished our day. We arrived at the hotel at 7:40 pm. Tired? For sure.
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