Friday and Saturday May 1 & 2, 2009

Friday we took care of Stella's car that we had left in the driveway at the house. She had a new radiator put in just before I retired, and a leak had developed at the transmission cooler which caused all the fluid to leak out on the driveway. We stopped by the house and picked up a set of keys to the car and dropped them off at Liggio's Goodyear to have the follow-up work done. It was good to see Michael Liggio again and to catch up on some local news that we had missed.

Stella had to go to see her clients, so she went to Dr. Gulde's office in Dickinson, to Dr. Merritt's clinic in Webster and to Eric's office in Webster. All of this running around took the rest of the day, so we went over to Manvel to check on fuel prices. There had been a price war going on between some of the Alvin stations and the Chevron in Manvel, so we went to check on prices. The best price was at the Wal Mart in Alvin, which is on our way back home, so we stopped in and got diesel there. We took 20.3 gallons to go 374.7 miles for an 18.4 mpg average. We ended up paying $1.96 per gallon, so we did save $.03 per gallon. Not too much of a saving, but some. We probably won't do this again.

We returned home and Stella made us tacos for our supper.

Saturday morning we woke and started drinking our coffee and thinking about fixing breakfast when my phone rang. It was Ricky asking if we wanted to drive over to Galveston with them. I found out that we did want to go, so they came by and picked us up. We spent a very pleasant day with them, driving over to the Bolivar peninsula to see how much damage was left and to check on camping/fishing sites there.

While there are several homes that have been repaired and seem to be back to normal, there are many, many more that are still damaged or gone completely. The Bolivar area has changed a lot since I have been over there, and since the storm, we found that most of the area has been destroyed. The folks over there are making do the best they can without most of the stores and restaurants that were there before Ike. We saw a couple of bars and restaurants that have reopened and one enterprising person has opened a grocery store in a fifth wheel trailer. They don't have much selection, but I'll bet they do a pretty good business.

The RV parks there are mostly filled with workers and are pretty run-down looking. I don't think either Ricky or I will be going back to Bolivar any time soon. The fishing areas that Ricky remembered are now gone, so we won't be fishing there either.

We rode back across on the ferry. The lines onto the ferry weren't too bad today. We didn't see any dolphins on either boat trip but we did see that Seawolf Park has reopened. There is still some evident damage to the building, but it is open.

We drove down the beachfront in Galveston. Much of the beach business has reopened and new pilings are in place for Murdoch's Pier. The Flagship Hotel has not been repaired at all, and I don't know if it will ever come back.

We drove all the way to Jamaica Beach to check on camping there. The Galveston Island State Park is closed and no work is seen going on there. The Dellanera RV park is closed but there is a park in Jamaica Beach that is open but almost full. The sites are very small and close together, but if one wants to camp near a fishing area, this might be a place to consider.

Ricky and Dee decided that they are going to try the park where we are staying. There is fishing here onsite, and the spaces are large enough for the biggest trailers, so we called Bill to see if he wanted to come down here next weekend and he said yes. I will check with the office tomorrow on the availability of some sites for them.

After Ricky and Dee dropped us off, we went to Cameron's baseball game. His team made some errors, so they ended up losing 7-6 but they tried real hard. The boys all voted on the All Star team. Cameron took a lot of time to consider who he would vote for and several of his teammates seemed to take his selections as theirs. It is good to see him taking his time in making these decisions.

My boy is growing up!

Stella and I hadn't eaten all day, so we went to Uncle Chan's for supper. The food is good there and its a very quick meal. We realized after we ate that we had missed the Strawberry Festival in Dickinson again..... We have missed it for several years because we were busy and had planned to go, but we forgot about it. Oh
well.....

So long,