If the Hicks' have seen nearly every submarine there is to tour - we've also seen nearly every railroad museum there is to tour. Today we knocked out the Galveston Railroad Museum.I gotta say, it is a good one. Even if you aren't fans like we are, this one will keep you entertained. As we were walking through the tracks and climbing around the various cars I remembered a conversation I had one time with Bill and Evelyn Morris who were winter Texans in the Galveston area in their younger days. Bill - a former railroad engineer - gave this museum high complements which is saying something coming from a professional. He was right! And I wish he was still alive so that I could tell him we visited. I will, when I return, tell Evelyn.
This museum was among the best we have been to. We didn't opt for the audio tour. We are readers and there is a lot of information in the display cars and on placards attached to and scattered throughout the trains on the highlights. The old depot is wonderfully preserved with sculptures of the ghosts of travelers past going about their daily business while you listen to 1930s music playing in the loud speakers. They have telephone booths where you can pick up a 1930s style phone (a novelty for the boys) and listen to people important to the transportation industry. There are three model railroads to view and an impressive display of railroad china. My favorite was the Pullman. 
A luxury car that was owned by the editor of the Washington Post was sitting on track 5 with a note that said it had carried Dwight Eisenhower as a passenger. Behind it was a wonderfully preserved mail car and three beautifully preserved passenger cars. There are cabooses (I miss cabooses). But the real find of the day was in one of the dining cars. There in the kitchen was a six pack of soda from Pops. We felt we had come full circle.Ross and I ate at the 3 taco plate special at the snack bar for lunch while the boys ate the "very good beef gordita" plate. We enjoyed our dinner sitting in the gazebo frequently rented for weddings to get out of the wind.
After lunch it was time to head to the harbor for a tour of the tall ship ELISSA and the "Official Harbor Tour of the Texas Seaport Museum. The tall ship, when it is operational, makes daily cruises of the bay area and you can ride along. During the off season (which is what this is), they close it for periods of time to restore and repair it for another season of sailing. Today, the crew was all up in the rigging doing something again....it was difficult to tell and hard to watch! Down on deck, today was varnishing and polishing day. There is a lot of wood and brass on the ELISSA. By this time tomorrow it will be shiny and sparkly.
Definitely an intimate experience, you wander amongst the crew who is hard at work. One of them (I think she needed a break) initiated herself into my thought process as I stared between a placard of information about the ship's wheel and compass and the wheel and compass itself trying to reconcile the two. She was most helpful. Below decks the experience was a bit roomier as the crew was concentrated mostly above decks. There was an excellent bit of research on the purpose and genesis of the sea shanty. The only one I knew was "What do you get with a drunken sailor." It's called a Stamp and Go shanty. Stamp and Gos were sung when the work required many hands taking hold of a line holding cargo or some other thing that needed hauling and marching away with the line on deck. Sing the song - it's cadence does have the feel of "hauling" something heavy.
After that, we rode the Seagull II for a great tour of the harbor and the boats docked there. Among them was the Del Monte boat that delivers 600 semi trailer boxes of pineapples and bananas into Galveston from places south each week and delivers them into these huge, refrigerated warehouses until they are hauled away to places north. There was also a boat docked that regularly ships cars back and forth overseas. The guide said that the inside of the boat looks like a big parking garage. Today it was unloading new Fiat vans and several industrial dump trucks onto the dock. We also learned a little about historic Pier 19 and the Mosquito Fleet. The pier is the home of Katie's Seafood Market as featured on TV. One of the workers brought out the "catch of the day" for all of us to view. It was a very large red snapper that definitely looked like a keeper. There were several brown pelicans on the dock and building eyeballing the fish as well.
From there, the Captain took us out to a concrete boat purposefully sunk over 100 years ago as a man made reef. Along the way we got a harborside view of Seawolf Park again. And....we saw dolphins. Which was, of course, the purpose of the cruise for most of the people and children on board. The excitement of the experience gained me a friend in the form of a chatty four year old young man who had just seen Moana, was an expert in climbing poles on the school playground and who entertained me with conversation for the rest of the ride. Something about boating takes the stuffing out of you. So we took off back for the house and a quiet evening at home watching movies, reading and generally staying out of each other's way.
