by laura beth

Nick and Sammi Jo took us on a Texas history excursion to the Battleship TEXAS and the San Jacinto Monument. It was super hot and humid (as it has been during our entire visit in Willis), but we loaded up with slushees from Sonic and piled into the zebra mobile (without ac) and headed south to the Houston Ship Channel. We hit the ship first, which is pretty impressive, but obviously not air conditioned. We kind of melted a little on our self-guided tour. It was quite interesting, though. As we walked through the ship I thought more and more about what it must have been like to live on it. I think I would have rather not. It's not so much the cramped quarters and lack of luxury (duh! I live in a 27-year-old 28-foot motorhome), but the lack of day light and the swishy washyness of being on open sea. Oh, and war. That would suck. But the sailors had everything they needed on the little floating city.

Next we headed over the San Jacinto monument and museum. We were overjoyed to have cool air conditioning and cold drinkign water. We didn't have time to go through the musuem, but we watched a fun little movie about the pivotal Battle of San Jacinto which was where Texas finally won its independence from Mexico. Were then rode an elevator to the top of the tower, which is the world's tallest monument tower, and which freaked me out just a little. As we left, we stopped at the far side of the reflecting pool and had a lot of fun taking silly photos with the monument in the background. All in all it was a great history-filled day.