We finished our Beaumont night in the Cracker Barrel parking lot, with our usual luck of having full lawn service outside our windows at 7am. I'm really amazed at the amount of detail to landscaping they do at Walmart and Cracker Barrel parking lots! That weed wacker went on for 2 hours around our RV - so we had to get up, fix coffee, and take Sara for a walk! No sleeping in while boondocking! We drove I-10 a short distance west of Beaumont, then headed south on 124 to avoid driving into the Houston perimeter. This route took us out to the Bolivar peninsula, with our first sightings of the Texas gulf. It was a very desolate coast, some small pockets of housing, but mostly wild - I would have loved to get out and walk, but we wanted to get settled in Galveston for our long 2 night stay!! The ferry from Port Bolivar to Galveston was very easy, quick (15 mins across), and free! Can't imagine why you would rather drive around through Houston to get here! Unfortunately, the weather is damp, drizzly, and foggy so view was not that great. We were on a tiny ferry boat next to all the other giant ships crossing or passing through the port of Galveston. Just a free boat ride for us! On the way into town, we explored a doggie daycare on Harbortown Rd - didn't work out due to Spring Break business, but saw UT Medical Center, and the Galveston Port area - cruise and working ships created a lot of water traffic. We then wound our way through town to the Bay Shores RV resort on Offatts Bayou. The desk manager, Chris, was very friendly and helpful and we were settled into a nice pull through spot with water views. We quickly befriended our neighbors, Trudy and Don, who are driving a ?40 ft classic Class A they've had for more than 25 years and over 170,000 miles! Trudy gave us the inside tour - all solid wood cabinetry, Corian counters, a bathtub, spice and pantry cabinets!!! After getting settled in ourselves, we realized we were really too far to walk to town (the main reason I chose this RV park since it said closest to town!), rain was threatening, and we needed to do a little housekeeping (wash clothes and water filter connector seems to have sprung a small leak). So we had lunch on the waterfront, til the rain drove us in, then decided to make the 1.5 mile walk to Walmart (on the beach!) to purchase new water filter and give Sara some exercise. I had researched another doggie daycare and made reservations for Sara at Dogs at Dolphins View on Saturday. The walk to Walmart gave us our exercise so we came back to have a great dinner of Lynn's grilled tuna (prepackaged and frozen for our trip) over arugula salad of cukes, blueberries, walnuts, black rice, and apples, dressed with my new favorite Kraft Zesty Lime salad dressing (found only in Canada, Target at Perimeter in Atlanta, or online from Walmart!!!) - but was perfect on the tuna! Laundry was a deal at $1.50 per load, but bathhouse at this RV park is worst I've experienced (showers don't drain water from around your feet, just filling the stall with dirty water, ick!). Linda opted for the tiny RV shower! It was a good night's sleep, thanks to RV air conditioning - very humid here! Up this morning for our Galveston touring day - this meant unhooking the RV so we could drive Sara to daycare and us to downtown. We left our outdoor mat and water towel at the site, but put all hoses on board. Dropped Sara at Dogs at Dolphins View where she had a large play yard, and several other dogs to sniff out! As we left there, the RV park (Saturday manager) called to ask if we had checked out - I told her we were just gone for the day, but planned to be back as we had paid for the site; she said an RVer had parked in our space and wanted to be next to their friends, they told her the spot was empty, so she apparently did not consult her reservations, and did not make them move after realizing her error. She informs me we are now going to be moved 2 slots away from water, not a fair resolution in my mind! But not a major inconvenience all things considered. We proceed to the Visitor Center where we have booked a city tour and are able to visit the Rosenberg Library - a Swiss immigrant in 1800's who left his wealth to city of Galveston to be spent on a library, 17 city fountains, the orphans home, and the Episcopal church. BTW, Galveston was known as the Ellis Island of the south since it had the second largest number of immigrants entering the US next to NYC! Who knew? The library showed a good history of all the natural disasters of Galveston (hurricanes and fires), and building of the causeway connecting the island of Galveston to the mainland in the 1800's by train. The architecture of the buildings are beautiful - houses, library, customs house, etc. So we next took a city tour to get an overview, while avoiding the rainy day. It would be a great walking or biking city when not rainy! I loved seeing the houses, including the Bishop's Palace which was originally the Gresham family home, then the home of the Catholic Bishop, now a tourist stop - but stunning woodwork, marble and silver fireplaces, wraparound balconies with view to the beaches, and incredible stained glass - I highly recommend the self guided audio tour! Next we sought out the Sunflower Cafe and Bakery, I thought to find the Red Snapper salad I had read about - either I remembered wrong restaurant or they changed menu. Not much seafood, but the shrimp salad with fried goat cheese and thin, fried onion rings, with walnut dressing was very good. But the chocolate tart we brought home for tonight's dessert may be the highlight for the day!! A very nice selection of bakery items, more numerous than I wanted to choose from! We circled back through the residential neighborhoods to get a better look at some of the houses and the carved tree stumps ( after Hurrican Ike, they hired artists to carve broken trees into carvings symbolic of the house or neighborhood it was in). The good news is that city streets here are very wide, easy to park an RV along, and very little traffic today - just my kind of town for RVing!!! We ran out of time to shop the "Strand" (the downtown district), and would have loved walking the piers. I had to be back by 5 to pick up Sara, and get Linda to church. Another quick grocery stop at Kroger "Signature", a fancy Kroger, then back to the Bayou Shores to find our new campsite in the dark and rain! But we're in by 7pm for the night (and not happy to be losing an hour tonight due to DST), heavy rain falling, and hoping for some clearing tomorrow! Thank goodness we have chocolate tart for dinner, especially since cousin Don just sent me pics of Aunt Marilyn's apple strudel they are enjoying in Struthers, Ohio tonight - Happy Birthday to AJ, and congrats to Abby on Confirmation tomorrow! Love you guys! And don't choke on my piece of strudel :)