Lost in the Swamps!

Today I will tell you about our trip from our beach house near Galveston to our hotel in Houston. What is there to tell, it is only a 30 minute trip? You might ask. You have obviously not met Sir D.

You know that stereotype about men not asking for directions? Yeah, very much NOT my husband. Sir D is all about asking the locals. Mostly it works out well for us. Anytime we’re in a new place he’ll stop and ask a local where the best place to eat/shop/get gas or whatever is, and we get the good info. He’s been known to stop at a Biker Bar and ask the Harley riders out front where the next gas station is. I have to say that was the friendliest bunch of scary looking people I’ve ever seen.

Sometimes, however, like our ill conceived trip to Houston, it backfires.

Here’s the story. We wanted to take the kids on the ferry. The ferry goes from Galveston Island to the Bolivar Peninsula. From there you can continue driving on to Louisiana, or you can turn back and go back over the same ferry again and then take the bridge back to the mainland, which takes you to Houston in approximately 30 to 45 minutes depending on traffic. Or you can drive ALL THE WAY around the bay or inlet or whatever they call it, back to Houston. Sir D had heard, from a local, that there was another ferry crossing the bay that we could take so we wouldn’t have to drive all the way around the bay.

Turns out…notsomuch true.

We drove all the way up the Bolivar Peninsula, until we were within about 30 miles of Louisiana. For those of you not familiar with the area, that is directly the WRONG WAY as we wanted to go to Houston, which I may have mentioned was THE OTHER WAY.

So we drove and drove and drove and finally headed north. We stopped in to visit the gas station (as it was the only building around) in Smith Point where the lovely local informed Sir D that he’d gone just a teensy bit out of his way and it was going to take him ‘quite a little while’ to get to Houston from here. And I do believe there was some snickering when Sir D put forth the question about a second ferry. Who would ride this imaginary ferry? The two inhabitants of Smith Point?

We now know our fate, and we commence to driving; a bit faster than I am comfortable in a 12 passenger van on very narrow and bumpy old roads.

I want to pause in the telling of this story to point out our surroundings for you to fully understand the urgency that has come upon Sir D. I felt like I had suddenly been transported back home to Kansas; field after field as far as the eye can see.

Then a cove of trees, then more fields. But I noticed something funny; strange birds floating on the fields. Odd. How do they do that? Oh, wait. I then realize these are not fields at all, but swamps! Truly!



I saw a man in his front yard in a boat! It looked, at first glance, like his boat is gliding on the grass in his front yard. Upon closer inspection I realize that his front yard is a green swamp just like the above photo!

I am thinking that if we open the door of our van, the mosquitoes will swoop down and carry us off like the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. No WAY am I opening those doors, I don’t care how much my offspring says they have to go potty!

So there we are, driving in the middle of swampy no where. The kids are starving because instead of feeding them the picnic lunch like we planed, we just kept throwing peanut butter crackers, apples and bottled water at them all afternoon. The sun is beginning to set, the kids are hungry again and we’re 1000 miles from nowhere to borrow a phrase from the great Dwight Yoakam. Not exactly what we planned for our day.

It gets better folks! Tune in tomorrow for the continuing saga of Lost in the Swamps!