On the way to Houston, via Hwy 10, you pass through Katy, Texas, as in "she took the Katy, and left me a mule to ride." (It was named after the railway.) So we spell it a little different, but it was still worth a picture.
I have to say, though, that Minute Maid stadium, with a retractible roof, looked pretty darn cool. Almost as charming as Pac Bell stadium in SF.
We stayed at an RV park that is adjacent to a flea market. I love flea markets, so I was excited that this is the cheapest place in (or nearby) town to stay (at $22/night after tax). I have to say, not that I like dissing places, but I was So disappointed with this flea market. It was ALL new stuff. No, 'stuff' is not the right word. It was all new crap. Brand new junk made in foreign countries, sold by folks from other foreign countries, which will all end up thrown away, probably very soon. It was like Wal-mart, except it didn't take Visa. And there was no farmer's market section. In a flea market bigger than Denio's in Roseville (big) with brand new buildings and even a midway down the center, and nothing to buy but crap crap crap. So I still managed to spend $10. I bought Katie a scooter for Christmas, which she has been asking for for months. Hopefully it won't fall apart before she gets to try it out.
One thing we liked very much about Houston was visiting Nasa, to the
south, between Houston and Galveston. It was even better than Cape
Canaveral in Florida, with a tram that takes you to the original
control room from which the Gemini and Apollo space flights were
all controlled. The very seats we sat in were the ones reserved
for the presidents and the family members of the astronauts. The
control room seemed so small--smaller than in the movie Apollo 13,
I thought. And it turned out that the computers which controlled
those early flights (which were of course state-of-the-art and took
up two rooms) had a combined capacity of 64 kilobytes of
memory.
Here are the pictures we took in Houston:
On the way to Houston, via Hwy 10, you pass through Katy, Texas,
as in "she took the Katy, and left me a mule to ride." (It was
named after the railway.) So we spell it a little different, but
it was still worth a picture.
Katie's favorite thing at NASA was the huge play structure. And
when these engineers can build something to reach the moon, you know
they can build a safe playstructure. This thing was so strong that
they invited parents to play in it too, which Mark and I did,
and that made Katie a lot more comfortable. It was at least 30 feet
tall and had rooms you could access with fun stuff to do. Eat that,
McDonalds.
It's hard to believe a man would sit in this cramped space all the
way into space. This is definitely the one from "I Dream of Jeanne."
the fun tram tour took us to this old mercury rocket. Isn't it the
quintessential rocket?
Here are Katie and I on the expensive ferris wheel. It cost about $4
per revolution, and we only got a view of the Hard Rock Cafe and
Highway 10. Oh well! It looks like a cute area to bring kids in the
summer, when there are fountains that the kids can run through, etc.
By the way, we've been watching gas prices drop since we left Vegas. Here are some of our bests: Albuquerque $1.76; Hobbs New Mexico (at Texas border): $1.69; Austin $1.67; Columbus, TX: $1.60; and the best so far, here in Houston: $1.59. Housing prices seem to fall comensurately, with new KB homes starting at $90K here. Just in case anyone's thinking of relocating here (we aren't).