Wednesday 26 June – 32 Celsius and sunny. We left Beaumont about 9 in the morning and took the Independence highway. On our way to Houston, we decided to take the free, five-minute Lynchburg ferry over to where the USS Texas is docked.
The USS Texas is a Dreadnought Battle Carrier. We paid $12 each to go on the ship. Pretty good deal I’d say ! You could climb right up to the bridge and right down to the bottom of the ship. It is huge and you were allowed to go anywhere you wanted on it. We got talking to a couple of the volunteers who are working on the ship. They are fixing it up as its deteriorating, quite badly. The USS Texas was used in World War I AND World War II AND it was the very first aircraft carrier. March 9, 1919, the USS Texas became the first warship to launch an airplane from its deck. They actually built a platform for a Sopwith Camel to fly off of it. But the first flight, the guy who flew the Sopwith Camel off the deck, had to ditch in the ocean when he returned as he wasn’t able to land when he came back. This was a pretty interesting vessel with lots of history.
SIDENOTE – As I am writing this blog post, I read that as of August 31, 2019, the Battleship Texas is closed for a lengthy repair project. No reopening date has been set. We were there the end of June so thankfully, we were able to tour it.
Read more about the upcoming repairs at news release:: Battleship Texas Closes to the Public Aug. 26. The San Jacinto Monument, the San Jacinto Battleground and the park’s nature trails are open during the Battleship closure.
We finished touring the Battleship, got in our truck and off we went! Ending up at the Space Center outside of Houston. The cost is $30 each to go in. We were told there are about 130,000 people that work here. That’s a lot of people! We had to wait 40 minutes in a line up to take a shuttle to the Astronaut Training Center. You can take two different shuttles, the one we took, or a shuttle to the Mission Control Centre tour. Our shuttle took us on a drive past a bunch of different buildings but we only stopped at the Training Centre. We were able to get out and head into the building. We climbed some stairs to the upper floor and could walk around that floor and look down to where the workers were working.
We got back on our shuttle and they dropped us off at the Saturn Five Rocket Museum. This is a pretty impressive place. We also got to go in the 747 and a space shuttle.
The 747 and Space Shuttle.
We got dropped off back at the Visitor Centre/Museum when the tour was over. We walked all through the rest of the museum looking at the displays. Such a fascinating place.
This has been a really busy day for us, and we’re old and we were tired, so instead of continuing on down the highway, we decided to stay in Houston for the night. We drove to the Space RV Park. It was closed but they had self registration so we took site 103 for $40 a night. Nice park. After we set up, we drove to the Saloon Door brewery, because we aren’t THAT old or THAT tired! We had some beer, which was pretty good, and $2 slices of pizza. They were having Trivial Pursuit night and I LOVE Trivial Pursuit. We were a team of two and some of their categories were beyond us as it was more local questions and we had no clue to some of the questions. I have other excuses why we sucked but I’ll leave it at that one. It was a lot of fun though.
We came last at Trivial Pursuit……… but we had fun!
Tomorrow we are heading to Dallas !
Trums Travels 