Day 1: Galveston and Houston

Our vacation started before the crack of dawn - 3:30 in the morning to be precise. We caught an early flight out to Houston, and made our first stop the Johnson Space Center. Here we first watched a short documentary about the history of the space program, from the launching of the Redstone rockets to the Space Shuttle. Afterwards, we ventured around the museum, checking out the life sized replicas of the Skylab and early rockets. We even got to touch a tiny sample of the moon that was 3.8 billion years old! To wrap up our visit, we drove over to the Rocket Park, to see the Saturn 5 rocket (pictured) as well as a couple smaller rockets stationed outside. Though they were nowhere near the size of the epic Saturn 5, they were still pretty impressive.
Our next destination was Galveston State Park, where we spent the better part of an hour relaxing on the beach and body-surfing in the Gulf. Jessie and I even had competitions to see who could go the furthest. Naturally, I emerged victorious every time. After spending the morning in the blazing heat of Texas, it was nice to have the opportunity to cool off in the water, and we all agreed the stop was well worth while.

Finally, we ended our day attending the Houston vs. Boston baseball game downtown. At first, Jessie feared we'd be ambushed by Astro fans because I had proudly worn my Boston shirt into the stadium. But then we found our seats among the rest of our Boston posse and settled in to enjoy the game - in safety. Just as I believed they would, the Red Sox won the game - 10-4!! It's always exciting to see the pros play, but also having a lot of humorous fan-cam moments made the night extra entertaining. Our favorite moment had to be when the kiss cam stopped on a couple, and instead of kissing his wife, the guy wrapped his arm around to kiss his can of beer. After the game, the stadium had a brief firework show as an early 4th of July celebration. We gazed up at the sky to enjoy the show, while listening to the patriotic orchestra that sounded through the cool night air. It was the end to a great day, leaving us excited to continue on to our next destination - Austin, and the memorable times that are still to come. :)