Not Gaga for Galveston

Wednesday, April 13th – Galveston, Texas – Day 64 

 Another windy, dreary day in Galveston. We decided to get some chores done while the weather was terrible. 

Our first stop was the laundry mat, The Washeteria. If I can give you loyal readers one piece of advice: Never go to a laundry mat with 2.7 out of 5 stars on google. For the record, Gen says that The Washeteria deserved 0.3 stars. The machines were all coated with a layer of dirt so you couldn’t really put your laundry anywhere. I don’t know why we stayed but we loaded the machines and I dropped Gen and the kids off to do some light shopping. When I got back, the washing machine was done but the clothes were soaking. The one other person in the laundry mat was wringing out their clothes by hand. We joked about the terrible machines then I followed his lead and started squeezing laundry. 

I tried one drying machine to find out that as soon as I put my money in the machine, I got an error message. I later found out the 18 dryers on that side of the laundry mat don’t work. My friend was drying on the other side, so I went close to him and put my clothes in to dry. I tried a second machine, and it had an error and ate my money. Finally, I found a second machine that worked. After 30 minutes of drying, I checked to see how the clothes were doing and found them to be cold. They had been spinning around not drying. I found a fourth machine and this one appeared to work. When I found out that the owner was next door, I went to complain and he was a fairly pleasant 80 year old man who kept saying “No problem my brother, I’ll help”. He gave me back all the money I lost. I pumped my two working dryers full of coins and we left for lunch. 

We went to a buffet called Golden Corral. Gen now has a favourite American buffet stop. The food was delicious, John was free, the other two kids were $5, and we were $10 each for lunch. I would recommend it. I have no idea how they provide such a cheap price (nor do I really want to know) but they do. 

 The weather briefly started to improve so I took the kids to a play structure while Gen went to finish the laundry. It was a nice park, on an adjacent property to the play structure we went the day before, with a baseball glove the kids could climb on. They met a friend, naturally, and started to play. 

 The weather turned back to rain, and we were thinking of going back to the trailer but I thought we should see a few things. There was Seawolf Park where they had a submarine and battleship that you could walk on. We arrived and they were closing shortly and despite being on the best free things to do list, cost an unreasonable amount of money for a rainy day. 

We then drove to the Strand, a historic district near the port in Galveston. They had nice buildings, stores, restaurants, and shops but it was still raining so we didn’t bother getting out. Still nice to see. They also had a historic sailing ship we looked at from afar. Lastly, we went to see if Walmart had solar panels so we could charge the trailer battery while we were primitive camping, but they didn’t have any. Back to the trailer. 

 We tried to play Where in the World is Carmen San Diego in the common area at the campsite. It was complicated but we made some headway before John started turning off the lights on us again and again. When John ran off, Charlotte followed and then Gen. The game was over. 

 I stayed up to plot all the things we were told to do in West Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah on a map. Using google to list the top 25 things to do and best hikes in each state helped fill in the map. I’m really excited about seeing New Mexico and Utah. There seems to be some gorgeous places to visit with an emphasis on hiking which I’m looking forward to. I started to blog, but sleep caught up with me and I went to bed.

Addition: We told someone in Big Bend that we went to Galveston and their response was "Why did you go there?". Gen asked "Why do you say that? The weather? The wind?". They said "The oil refineries everywhere."