Monday, July 20, 2009

Galveston

I guess I never realized how much fun Galveston could be.

The grandkids were here for a week - with their parents, of course, which makes it even more fun - but we saw this ad for Moody Gardens, which has recently reopened after getting drowned by Hurricane Ike.

I mostly wanted to go because of the dinosaur-related stuff. See, they have these pyramids - three of them - and one is an aquarium complex, where you can go down several floors and see replicas of several coral reefs in the world. They've figured out how to reproduce the corals so we can visit living specimens in their natural environment. Well, sort of natural. It's a fake natural, but it's real coral.

Another is kind of a general scientific interest pyramid, which has what I came to see, the dinosaur stuff. They have an Imax movie I've been wanting to see for years: Dinosaurs Alive, in 3D. You better believe I enjoyed that, even if the narrator did say stupid things like "Less than 2% of dinosaur species have been discovered," which is mathematical nonsense, since we're expressing a percentage of an unknown quantity by definition. I don't care - I just love seeing realistic 3D dinosaurs trying to bite me right in front of my face.



My favorite was the third pyramid (in no particular order), the rain forest. Here, you can follow a comfortable path and see specimens of plants from rain forests of the world, including coffee trees, cocoa bean trees, and vanilla orchids. Did you know that vanilla comes from orchids? I sure didn't.


Weird flowers in the rain forest pyramid. Photo by wm

There were colorful birds, turtles and fishies in the pools of the pyramid, and I want to go again so I can wander more slowly.


Birds in Moody Gardens rain-forest pyramid. Photo by wm

After spending the day at Moody Gardens, GA thought it would be a great idea to take the Bolivar ferry off the island. It was a good idea, since the grandkids had never been on one, and as far as I know had never been on the ocean except for the beach. So we went across to Bolivar, then turned right back around and came back to Galveston. It happened to be sunset as we made the crossing, which was perfect timing.


Sunset on the Bolivar ferry. Photo by wm

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