We did laundry in the morning at the RV Park, and the huge benefit of doing this (besides washing our sandy, stinky beach towels), was that we could pay by credit card at the machines--hurrah, no scrounging around for quarters! In this heat though, it's like getting third-degree burns taking the items out of the dryer (note: zippers are the worst for feeling the burn)!
It wasn't long before we left Brazoria that we saw so, so many oil refineries again, cramming the horizon with their tall distillation columns, miles of metal pipes, and spewing thick black crude oil into the sky. Quite the sight...we also drove past a waterway with brown, muddy water. Was it polluted, or was it just mud sitting at the bottom?
Surfside's Up!
Our route from Brazoria to Galveston took us along the coast, passing first at Surfside Beach, along the Gulf of Mexico. Clearly this is a popular summer vacation spot for people to spend time along the coast. It was also obviously prone to flooding and hurricanes--we not only saw signs for "Hurricane Evacuation Routes", but the houses were almost all raised on stilts! It was a pretty oceanside town, with the homes painted in various bright colors, such as sunny yellow, warm orange, and pastel lilac. We also drove past the Kettle House, which is a squat, barrel-like building that has apparently kept it safe from hurricanes. It kind of looks like some kind of pot that's been boiling something which has overflowed before you've run over to take the lid off and turn off the stove. With its muted colors and stocky stature, it certainly wasn't as striking as the colorful stilt buildings around it!
With all the beachfront homes, ocean views, and seafood restaurants as we drove along, we started to crave fish & chips, so we stopped at Mel’s Blueplate and Seafood Express, a highly rated diner in Galveston with plenty of seafood options on the menu. We ordered the seafood dinner: grilled shrimp, grilled fish and two sides (green beans and grilled zucchini/squash), which came with tartare sauce and cocktail sauce. We devoured the meal sitting parked alongside one of the beaches in Galveston, which was delicious--our only gripe was that we wished the serving was bigger for a large (we are in Texas after all, where everything is supposed to be bigger)!
The beach was lovely and there were plenty of people there, but it was definitely stinking hot, with a furnace-like breeze hitting us as soon as we got out of the RV. So we decided to skip the swim, sand, and potential sunburn. Instead, we continued along, driving past the emotive 1900 Storm Memorial and Galveston Seawall Historical Marker on the footpath. This marker commemorates the victims and aftermath of the catastrophic hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900. It was the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, killing over 8,000 people.
Towards the end of the Galveston Seawall is the Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier, which is very much in the style of many American waterfront piers, with a roller coaster, 15 rides, carnival games and souvenir shops. We could immediately see the resemblance to the ones we've been to in Santa Cruz, Santa Monica, and others.
As we'd been driving along, we noticed that we definitely were getting closer to Louisiana. For example, rather than a ton of BBQ and Tex-Mex restaurants that we'd seen in cities like San Antonio, the eateries were offering more Cajun flavors, like Po' Boys and crawfish boils. We enjoyed eating Cajun cuisine when we'd visited New Orleans a few years ago, so while we didn't eat any today, we're looking forward to digging in when we get to Louisiana!
The Birthplace of Juneteenth
In 2021, the US government declared Juneteenth a national holiday. It is celebrated on June 19 each year to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. After the end of the Civil War, an executive order--the Emancipation Proclamation--was issued by US President Abraham Lincoln that declared all slaves to now be free. However, it was two years later that this order was officially declared in Texas, and Galveston was one of the last places in the Confederacy where news reached enslaved people. Juneteenth marks the anniversary of the day when enslaved people in Galveston learned of their freedom, which occurred on June 19, 1865.
There are over 200 Juneteenth landmarks in Galveston, and we visited the Juneteenth Memorial, which shows a statue of state Representative Al Edwards reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. We initially couldn't find the monument and walked all around the block, only to realize that it's inside the Ashton Villa building, in the driveway facing the side and partially obstructed by trees. Ashton Villa was a home built using slave labor, but is now where the Galveston community commemorates the reading of Proclamation each year, and there's now an exhibit dedicated to Galveston's Juneteenth story inside. A block up the road on Broadway Avenue is an impressive World War II Memorial on the median, towering above the traffic on either side.
We drove around the historic area of Galveston, stopping to check out some of the pretty historic homes, with quite having historic markers in the front yard detailing when it was built, the architecture style, and who lived here. Again, seeing the homes in their French, Spanish, and Italianate architectures reminded us of the historic houses that we'd seen in New Orleans.
One of the impressive houses in Galveston that runs tours to see inside is the 1892 Bishop's Palace (also known as the Gresham House), one of the most significant Victorian homes in the country. It was under renovation when we went, with scaffolding all around it. Across the road is the equally impressive Sacred Heart Catholic Church, a pristine white and huge place of worship built in 1903-04 that features ornate octagonal towers, elaborate ornamentation, and a variety of arches.
What was also interesting about Galveston was that there were lots of different places of worship--we saw many Christian churches, but also a Jewish synagogue and an Islamic mosque. And as we'd seen in other cities where there was a steady theme for their sidewalk sculptures (for example, dinosaurs in Vernal and bisons in Oklahoma City), Galveston had turtles in all different colors and designs.
Cruising Out of Galveston
As we arrived at the intersection of the 1892 Bishop's Palace and the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, at the end of the road we could see a Carnival Cruise ship sailing away at that exact moment. It was cool to see this ship straight ahead, flanked by these two impressive buildings! We continued to the end of Galveston island, and along the thin strip of land there were many people who were waist deep in the water fishing, or simply hanging out on the beach with their cars, beach chairs, and the like. At the tip of the island was RA Apffel Park/East Beach but we needed to pay for parking, so we turned around. (By the way, there's a Pink Dolphin Monument at this beach, the first monument dedicated to gender and sexual minorities in the southern US).
We left Galveston, but Google continues to have a tough time helping us navigate in Texas, telling us (and a handful of others) to get off the highway, only to navigate us right back onto it! But we arrived at the RV park that we'd booked without any issues, which was outside of Galveston and on the way to Houston. We arrived at Jackie's Place RV Resort after office hours, and appreciated that the RV park was clean and quiet (it was full, but everyone was either out or hanging inside their RV; we only saw a few people the whole time we were there). The one major downside is that we booked to stay here because of the pool, but found out that it was closed for maintenance--yet there was nothing stating this in our welcome pack or even outside the pool itself. This is the second time we've lucked out when it comes to not having a working pool (we could have really used it as well when we were in the Badlands during the heatwave), but at least we got our air-conditioning to work all night without overheating and turning off; Michael seems to have worked this out now so there won't be any future issues. Here's to comfortable evenings!
Route Map
