By the numbers:

• 306 miles, all in Texas from San Antonio to Galveston and back to Houston – 3032 total miles for the trip – about one quarter done
• highest temp:  93 at about 3:00 then 71 at 3:30 and back to 89 by 4:00.  Drove through a major rainstorm in between of the type we never see in Seattle.
• elevation low point of the day – just few feet about sea level at Galveston
• still at 8 total states for the trip.
• Licence plates spotted: New York and New Jersey – only 8 more to have seen all 50.
• Two new National Park sites:  San Antonio Missions and El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro or the Spanish Colonial Royal Road.
  – 15 total park sites for the trip.
• One other Museum – The Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston.

Just a few tidbits for today:

When I find I have sort of overdone the number of museums I have gone to in a short period of time if feels like my brain is full and can’t hang onto anything more.  That was me today at the San Antonio Missions.  It seemed really interesting at the time but after the fact if you ask me what I learned it would be like the parents talking on a Charlie Brown cartoon. “Wa, wa, wa, blah, blah, blah. ”  Hopefully I can reset and get ready for the rest of the trip.

Another event which was the result of loss of concentration was when driving and getting directions from our Android GPS, whom we lovingly refer to as Miss Gypsy.  I wasn’t paying attention to closely when I realized the last thing Gypsy had said contained these 4 words, Left, East, South, and Cross.  My brain’s reaction was to try to figure out which of those I should do:  Go left, go east, go south, or go cross the road.  The answer was that I was supposed to “Turn Left on East South-Cross Road.”

One more brain freeze event was at the hotel when I discovered that in addition to being red-green color blind, (to see if you are take this online test) I am also apparently HCAI (Hotel card arrow impaired).  I could not get the room card to work no matter how I tried (we even had the hotel clerk make us new cards).  I decided to try the card each of the 4 possible ways it could go in the slot only to be told on the last try that there was an arrow on the corner of the card to help guide you on how to insert it in the slot.  When inserted with the arrow first it of course worked correctly.

We were at a Huge truck stop, respite, service station, food, trinket, kind of place today with literally 100’s of cars and trucks all stopped around lunch time.  Over the load speaker someone said, “would the owner of the red truck please return their vehicle.”  My thought was: “Oh yeah, I am sure there’s only going to be one of those here.”

At the museum in Galveston, I pointed in one direction and asked for a suggestion on a viewpoint to see the Gulf of Mexico.  I was informed that the direction I was pointing was not toward the Gulf.  I got directions, which were actually helpful, but when back to the car confirmed my thought that we were actually on an Island at the time and technically any direction was toward the Gulf.

After driving through the above mentioned rainstorm we spent some time at the seawall and beach area in Galveston.  The scene reminding me of my first time ever visiting any ocean beach.  At Christmas 1974 my cousins, Pete and Mark, took me with them to spend the holiday with their parents, my uncle and aunt Al and Edna, at their winter home in Brownsville, Texas.  They taught me how to body surf in the Gulf on Christmas day.  (The locals dressed in their winter coats thought we were crazy, but for us, coming from 20 below temps in Iowa, the water was warm.)  I was later able to use my body surfing “skills” in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  Thanks cousins for that memory.

Onto a new state tomorrow, Louisiana.