A Few Weeks Near Houston

As we continue our trek from the Keys to California, we are spending some time at our Thousand Trails preserve on the shores of Lake Conroe, north of Houston. I need to revisit my allergist as I continue to try to solve the chronic sinus and bronchial infections that persistently put a damper on our fun times.

At least we can enjoy meeting up with friends like Rick and Vicky (see previous post) and Lloyd and Marian, our crazy Vancouver pals, as they pass through Bush Intercontinental on their way from the Rio Grande Valley to visit friends and family in Newfoundland. (And we think we get around!) We chose the Olive Garden near the airport for lunch, one of our favorite nationwide restaurant choices. Turns out the only pasta Lloyd will eat is lasagna, but it looks like he got it down okay. Maybe anything goes good with beer.

We've stayed at this park many times in the past five years, and this time we finally made the 70-mile drive down to our first liveaboad boating home (a few months short of 20 years ago) in Kemah, a nice little yachting community on the Clear Lake estuary of Galveston Bay. This area was clobbered by Hurricane Ike two years ago and our old marina home, Watergate Yachting Center, is still trying to finish the rebuilding effort. The new docks are pretty spiffy (a common nautical term meaning "snazzy")

By now, you know us and food, so we could hardly come this far and skip eating lunch at our favorite Texas seafood restaurant, Pappa's in nearby Webster (home of NASA.) Yummmm. Bloody Marys, raw oysters, Oysters Rockefeller, and redfish. Dang - where did it go???

   

By the way, over our three-week stay, the allergist dosed me up with a powerful bacteria killer (one of those "last resort" antibiotic) and convinced us (me) to get my sinuses cat-scanned. The result of the scan was his strong recommendation to get sinus surgery at the earliest possible time. But the holidays are coming up and we are wanting to get out west - WHINE, WHINE. Rats! This is an argument I know I will lose.