Having Fun in Houston

 If you've read past posts on this blog you'll know that our family has had two failed attempts to go on a weekend getaway. well this last weekend, we finally made our way to Houston to take a break from all that's been happening.

We started our vacation Friday afternoon driving three-and-a-half hours to Houston. Our hotel was on the South-east side of Houston near Leauge City, so was a bit further of a drive. When we arrived at our hotel, we unpacked and walked over to a nearby Mod Pizza for dinner.

Headed to Houston

After pizza, we came back and played a competitive game of Dutch Blitz to wait for it to get dark, so we could swim when it was dark and cool, Surprisingly, we had a lot of fun in the pool.

Dutch Blitz

After tiring ourselves out, we went to bed to get refreshed for the next day.

Saturday we woke up bright and early to catch our jet ski we rented. I was old enough to drive the jet ski, so I was pretty excited and nervous. My dad showed me the ropes of the jet ski. and it was pretty simple, the further back you held the trigger, the faster you go. 

Beware the gators.

Getting ready to ski

It's a 3-seater

Zoom!

I was pretty careful when I was driving, but I still liked to go fast. My dad, on the other hand, liked to fling me off at 20mph. That was probably because I tipped him off at one point, but still, it hurts to be kicked off a jet ski. Later in the evening, we headed to Kemah Boardwalk, which wasn't as fun as it seemed, because it was so hot! They had some rides and a view of the ocean.

Do you have any idea, how long it took to take this picture?

In the sky tower

The next day was the beach at Galveston. From our hotel, the beach was about 45 minutes away, and when we got there we set up our canopy, put on sunscreen, and immersed ourselves in the waves. When we arrived the ocean was at low tide, so as time went on, the waves gradually got bigger. Also, my brother and I dug holes near the water to buried in. I had Doritos thrown on me so I would be attacked by the seagulls.

Here's the beach

I had to wear my hat backwards to keep my hair out of my eyes!

Buried Cade

Buried Alex

A lot of wind on the coast, perfect for kite flying!

Much needed shade

Slo-mo

Doritos

On the last day before we headed home, we went to the Houston Museum of Science. It was an interesting museum with some cool exhibits, like the dinosaurs, gems, Egypt, and death by natural causes, and some okay exhibits, like an energy hall, America, and winning nature pictures. I don't have a lot to say about the museum, just a lot of pictures.

Giant inflatable Mars!

Spiders

Trilobites

T-Rex!

Triceratops

It's crazy to me how big these birds were, this thing is about 25ft tall!

A rainbow nautilus shell!

Petrified wood is pretty cool

Imagine if sloths were still this big

Gems!

Fabra'ge

Sandstone

Ancient Eygpt

Rosetta Stone

This is a Foucault's Pendulum, as time goes on in the day, the Earth's rotation affects the pendulum, tilting it very slightly, so about every 15 minutes, it knocks over a wooden peg, marking the time.

And that does it for our weekend in Houston! Pretty soon school starts, so there will be a post about my new experience with virtual learning.

Ghastly Golfing

As time goes on it gets harder and harder to find new and fun things to do, so every weekend, our family sits down and brainstorms ideas of what we can do to keep our minds off 2020. And the idea we tossed around and decided on was a tryout of Top Golf.

Top Golf is a driving range, or basically bowling, except with a golf ball. When you get there, the people show you to your bay and instruct you to hit your balls in the direction of several large holes on the field. The gameplay is fairly simple, you have eight holes that if you get your ball closer to the middle of the large hole, you get more points, also. the further away the hole is, the whole hole has more points. The only way the points are scored is by a tracker in the ball.

After we heard the rules we were somewhat ready to go except with one problem. None of us have ever golfed before.

So as we started we were acting like goofy little goobers who had never seen a golf club before, but as time went on we got a better idea of the game and actually started scoring points. Dad however was whopping those golf balls to the back of the field at 120 mph! So the rest of us had a hard time getting points. We played two games, Mom won the first game with 76 points, and I won the second game with 48 points. We all had a fun time at Top Golf, and will probably come back for another shot.

Here's the field

Dad's Drive

Timelapse of our first game

Now on a more serious note, about two weeks ago I provided an update on COVID-19, and since then things have worsened. As of August 3rd, 18,500,00 cases and 700,000 deaths have been reported worldwide. In the U.S. about 4,900,000 cases and 160,000 deaths have been reported. In Texas we've reported 462,000 cases and 7,500 deaths, pushing Texas past New York, which was the worst affected state at the beginning of the pandemic. Even here in San Antonio, we've reported 42,000 cases and 350 deaths.

As seen these numbers are increasing drastically and as time goes on this pandemic seems like it'll never end.

This weekend, our family is going on a little getaway, so I'll update my blog soon on that note.