MAKING MEMORIES WITH ANGIE AND RICK…DAY 2

Saturday March 12 – Today we headed with Angie and Rick for a cruise on the Houston Ship Channel. But we had to make a quick stop along the way at the “Stone Heads”, aka Presidents’ heads. We stumbled on these guys a couple years ago and have visited them several times since. We used to be able to wander around and among the heads, but vandalism forced the artist to move them to a fenced in area. They are actually made of fiberglass.

How this got in there we have no idea. But it is cute.


We arrived at the Ship Channel with time to spare before are 10 a.m. boarding. This is a free cruise. It is extremely popular. On-line reservations need to be made weeks in advance. There are three sailing times today (100 people per trip), and they are all booked solid. We did this trip a couple years ago with our daughter, Carrie,  and enjoyed it so much we wanted to share it with Angie and Rick.

The Port of Houston is a 25-mile-long complex of 150-plus private and public industrial terminals along the 52-mile-long Houston Ship Channel. The Ship Channel is an amazing economic boom to the city of Houston.....read all about it here.

We boarded the Sam Houston.

A 2015 study by Martin Associates says ship channel-related businesses contribute 1,174,567 jobs throughout Texas, up from more than 1 million jobs cited in a 2012 study.

This activity helped generate more than $264.9 billion in statewide economic impact, up from nearly $182.6 billion. Additionally, more than $5 billion in state and local tax revenues are generated by business activities related to the port, up from $4.5 billion.

Houston to the west.

Paul, Marsha, Angie, Rick

What a great day so far. That was part of Marsha’s tour for Saturday. We will finish up the tour in the next post.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

 

MEMORIES WITH ANGIE AND RICK DAY 1..CONTINUED

Friday, March 11 – Continuing with our tour of Houston, we stopped for lunch at Treebeards for Jambalaya and Seafood Gumbo. Yummy!

They have several locations. We visited the one on Main Street in Old Market Square, Historic Houston, with plenty of old architecture to enjoy. Treebeards restaurant on Main is in the 2^nd oldest building in Houston!

Old Market Square is fun to visit. Several murals and lots of old buildings are found in this area.

The La Carafe building is listed on the National Register for Historic Places and is believed to be the oldest bar in Houston and is the oldest commercial building still in use in Houston. It was closed when we visited…darn.

Many of the bars and restaurants contain original features of the
buildings in Old Market Square.

Across the plaza is Lauren’s Garden which is dedicated to the victims of September 11, 2001. A very nice tribute to a young lady lost on Flight 93. The back drop is quite thoughtful......a building similar to one of the twin towers.

The tower rising in the distance reminds us of both our vulnerability
and our strength.

Part of the garden area.

We then jumped in the truck and headed to a couple temples we recently visited and wrote about. The Vietnam Temple, Cao Dai Temple, which unfortunately was closed, but our friends were able to enjoy the outside

We also visited BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, India Temple.

That was enough for one day! We dropped Angie and Rick off at their hotel so they could rest for a couple hours before dinner at the Elks Lodge and an evening of cards. What does Marsha have in store for them tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

MAKING MEMORIES WITH ANGIE AND RICK

Friday, March 11 – Friends, Angie and Rick, are here in Houston for a visit. They are our dear friends from Mission, TX. After they arrived on Thursday afternoon, they came over to the RV for a delicious Italian dinner prepared by Marsha. We enjoyed dinner and some adult beverages as we talked the night away. It was Rick’s birthday, so Marsha made him a special dessert called Pull-Apart. We had it consumed in no time.

Marsha wasn't letting them off easy. She has several entire days of touring planned before they return home to Mission. We started out Friday morning bright and early picking them up at 9:00 am. It was nice Marsha to let us wait until rush hour traffic thinned out a bit, because we were heading to downtown Houston. As a side note...it was surprisingly easy to find on-street parking for Paul's big dually truck. Normally that could be a problem in large cities.

Our first stop was Houston's Tallest building, the Chase Tower. It reaches 75 stores in the sky but we could only go to the 60^th floor observation deck. What a view!

A wall of glass overlooking the city.

Just a few of the highways here in Houston. We never saw the traffic so light.

We then headed back to ground level and took the escalator down 20 feet to The Tunnels. This is a maze of 7.5 miles of underground passage-ways, restaurants, and stores. It is beneath most of the central downtown area. We were warned to be careful or we would get lost. :-) We had to ask several times for directions but eventually returned to the surface sidewalks to see more of downtown Houston.

A maze of tunnels.

Houston has such a variety of architectural buildings. We really enjoy looking at all the beauty of the buildings.

One thing we just can’t figure out is some of the art work many cities display. We were really stumped as to what some of the art work was suppose to represent. Here are two examples:

This one made a bit more sense.

We will continue our tour of Making Memories with Angie and Rick Day 1 in our next post. It has been a couple of very very full days.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!