Grandson on Board
27 October 2013 | Bayland Marina, Baytown, TX
Jill
This has been a tough month with Jamie on medicine. We had no weekend when we could get down to the boat. However, Jamie participated in an obstacle course/race on Saturday the 26th (called a Tough Mudder). She signed up a while ago along with a few other people from work. The race was 4 hours away so she was going to have to drive out Friday evening. It occurred to me that there was really no reason why Adler couldn’t miss a couple of days of pre-school, so I asked Jamie and she agreed it would be a good idea to take him to the boat from Thursday to Saturday, as she wouldn’t be home until Saturday evening.
Thursday morning we packed up and left. I was surprised we managed to get gone, complete with kid and dog, at 9:25 AM. The trip took an extra hour as we stopped and let Adler play for a while at a MacDonald’s along the way. Also, having Adler in the back seat next to him seemed to agitate Fuzzy even more, and we had to stop two other times for Fuzzy.
Adler was enthralled with the whole boat and marina experience. He loved entering the codes to get past the gate on the dock and into the restrooms. He had no problem with wearing his life vest on the dock; in fact, he would get it on himself. He slept like a log on the boat. I, however, did not sleep so well. We elected to try to sleep three across in the king sized bed in the aft cabin. I was in the middle. Bud took up the space that Bud takes up, Adler tended to roll into me. I had about 18 inches of room. Both mornings I was up at 5:15, relieved to have room to stretch.
Friday I had promised Adler we’d take him to a nearby amusement park, the Kemah Boardwalk. Adler also asked about finding seashells. Meanwhile, I was wondering about our friends from Kooky Dance, as we’d hoped to get to see them but the boat wasn’t there. They texted and we found out the boat was nearby and coming back Friday, so we made plans to eat together (we invited them aboard since we had dog and grandson to attend to) and to take them to pick up their car where they’d left it when taking Kooky Dance nearby to have a dodger made. Anyway, this was now getting to be a challenging schedule for Friday.
Bud suggested we go back down to Galveston and take the ferry across to Bolivar Peninsula to the beaches there. Adler wanted to find an Auger shell (he calls them Tornado Shells). We didn’t think he’d find one, but hoped he’d have fun anyway. We were right on both counts. Adler was not at all excited about the idea of crossing on the ferry until we drove aboard. Once we were underway and he was out of the car he loved every minute of it. He laughed at the wind and the waves and the birds flying around. The pelicans were flying along with the ferry; from the upper deck they were only about 20 feet away. He thought they were very funny. We saw a lot of dolphins; I think Adler finally spotted one on the trip back.
We tried to find a beach without driving too far up the peninsula. The first place we stopped was Fort Travis Park. It’s an old fort from civil war days where they had guns guarding the entrance to Galveston Bay. There were no beaches, and the guns were long gone (much to Adler’s disappointment) so we drove on. The next place we tried was a road through the Bolivar Flats Bird Sanctuary. The road ended right on a wide, sand beach. Adler loved it. There were only a few little shells. He didn’t care. He was thrilled with everything and ran up the beach laughing at the waves and splashing through the little pools left behind by high tide. We collected shells in his MacDonald’s Happy Meal bucket and he was excited about every shell and piece of shell he spotted. Someday we’ll have to get him down to Padre Island where the real shelling is.
On the way back, after another fun ferry ride, we made an alternate plan, considering the time and our itinerary. Bud dropped Adler and I off at Kemah Boardwalk then he stopped at a store to get more provisions and went back to the boat to tend to Fuzzy and start supper. He was going to pick us up between 5 and 5:30. Adler and I had had no lunch so the first order of business was finding restrooms and food. No fast food was to be found! I later learned that a giant seafood restaurant, Landry’s, owns the whole park so I guess they want to encourage restaurant eating. There were several restaurants, but the closest I could come to a place for a quick snack was Starbuck’s. Adler and I ended up eating fruit and nut bars. As five o’clock approached Adler was tired and hungry and getting very hard to keep happy. I called Bud, no he wasn’t on his way, he was walking Fuzzy. Kooky Dance was back so he was going to ask Tamera and Scott about picking up their car, if it was reasonable to do while coming to get us. Not before you get us, please, I said. I think Bud made it about 45 minutes later, having gotten stuck in the Seabrook traffic. It was a very long 45 minutes for me. I’m not sure whether it was Adler or Gramma who was most unraveled by the time Bud got there.
Tamera from Kooky Dance was along. Adler chatted with her confirming that she was one of the two people from Kooky Dance and that they were both coming to dinner. Scott was not along because they had no power to their boat, though there was power on the dock and their power cord was good. Ugh, I hate electrical problems. Scott is an electrical engineer, so I don’t think such problems daunt him the way they do me.
It turns out that the place they had their boat work done was only a couple of miles from the Kemah boardwalk, so we quickly got Tamera to her car. Adler took the job of pointing out her car as we followed her back to the marina, so Grandpa didn’t get lost. (Although after the first two turns we were on the road that leads right to the marina.) At the marina I pointed out Kooky Dance, now in her slip. Scott and Tamera were sitting in the cockpit so Adler said hello, asked them again if they were coming to our boat for dinner, and pointed out that we were the first boat out on “C” dock. They are the first boat on “B” dock and about 100 feet from us. Once in our cockpit Adler called back to assure them that this was the boat to which they needed to come.
I fed Adler as soon as we got aboard, as he was not going to make it any longer without some real food. He was delighted when Scott and Tamera came aboard, especially since Tamera brought him a coloring book and crayons and some special glasses that created the image of a snowman around every light you looked at. We had a fun time, even though conversation, with an overexcited and very tired four-year-old, was limited. After Scott and Tamera left I took Adler up to the restroom before getting him ready for bed. Tamera met us and gave Adler two more pairs of glasses, one that made Santa faces around the lights, and one that made angels, whose wings fluttered when you nodded your head up and down. Tamera quickly made the list of Adler’s favorite people.
Adler again slept well and we had a good trip back, except Adler never stopped talking, ever! That makes for a loonng trip. We’re very happy that Adler likes being on board the boat. Hopefully there will be other opportunities to take him, although down and back in three days is a hard trip for a four-year-old (and those with him).
I put other pictures of our weekend in the Baytown album. I put other photos of the past weekend, when we took Adler and his friend Alex to a near-by farm with Halloween activities, in the Texarkana album.