Pat Bean's blog

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” Ursula K. leGuin

African Safari: A Texas Prelude

The Johnson Space Center was busy the day Kim and I visited, and dreamed of what it would be like to leave this planet's gravity. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Kim’s arrival at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston in August should have been greeted with 100-degree temperatures and 90 percent humidity. Instead the temperature was about 80 with little humidity.

The sadist in me was disappointed. I had told Kim what to expect of Texas summers, and now my native state was making me into a liar. Oh well, much better for the two days of sight-seeing before we left for Africa.

Our first stop was the Johnson Space Center.

I was living south of Houston, near all the glamorous astronaut happenings, when Neil Armstrong set the first human foot on the moon, uttering the historic words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

I’ve been fascinated with space travel ever since. And Kim and I both expressed awe at the idea of an adventure in space. She even oohed in awe when she actually touched a moon rock. I had taken a couple of grandkids to the center previously and recalled doing the exact same thing.

Our sight-seeing continued the next day with a trip to Galveston via the Blue Water Highway that runs from Surfside, parallel to the Gulf of Mexico, to San Luis Pass and then across a bridge to Galveston Island. My son and his family came along, and we did some birding on the way over to the island.

I had earlier infected my son, Lewis, with my passion for birds, and the others in the party were patient with our dawdling drive. They might even have enjoyed the sight of brown pelicans flying low over the horizon, snowy egrets gathered in the shallows and a lone great blue heron patiently fishing along the shore that we saw this day.

Hurricane Ike, just as a matter of trivia, took out the Blue Water Highway the next year, but it has since been rebuilt.

Laughing gulls and royal terns are common beach-side sides along the Blue Water Highway. -- Photo by Pat Bean

In Galveston, we walked along the sea wall, whose water-front sandy beach has been disappearing in recent years. Afterward, we stopped at the Rain Forest Cafe for dinner.

The cafe, which looks out on the Gulf and has an amazing rendition of an exploding volcano on its outside facade and a waterfall and computer animated wildlife on the inside is a popular place. We had an hour wait to be seated.

What helped make the wait worth the time was how the hostess finally announced that our table was ready.

“Bean, party of seven, your safari is ready to begin,” she said.

It seemed so apropos, as tomorrow Kim and I would fly to Africa and our safari would begin for real.

Next Episode: Flight to Nairobi