Sisters Trip (second half)

 After our Celeste-enforced workout the next morning,

we headed to a marina where we rented kayaks.

Celeste had a single and Destiny and I were in a tandem.

Dest had never kayaked before and was hestitant,

but I'm so glad she came with us.

We kayaked through Galveston Island State Park.

It was so cool. 

Lots of birds.

And striped mullet fish that would jump all the way out of the water.

It was hard work.

And Destiny didn't love it.

But I thought it was a fabulous way to spend the morning.

And the weather was perfect.

Warm, but overcast, so it never felt too hot.

The guy we rented the kayaks from told us to keep our eyes open for

Roseate Spoonbills. They are the vibrant pink bird that lives in the area.

As we were heading back to the marina, one flew over us.

It was so beautiful!

But it was too quick for me to snap a pic.

You'll have to take my word for it.

We actually saw another one in the median of

the road while we were driving home.

When we were finished kayaking, we went down to The Strand to do some souvenir shopping. It was the cutest street! So many cool buildings. The shopping itself was just ok. We didn't find everything we were looking for.

We saw a creepy plague mask guy.

And a GIANT trumpet.

They had a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory,

which will always make me think of B-train,

even though he doesn't work there anymore.

Destiny and I shared a delicious rocky road apple.

So, so good.

They have painted sea turtle sculptures throughout the city.

Isn't this the cutest street?
Love the architecture on those old buildings.

One store had a giant shark mouth inside.

After shopping, I wanted to fly Celeste's giant trick kite.

It's like our two-stringed-one, except maybe twice the size?

It was so fun!

And super powerful.

There was an empty lot right across the street

from the beach where only a few homeless people

lived, so we thought that would be a good place to 

fly the kite.

Instead of walking, this time we got to ride bikes!

Celeste has an electric bike. 
I had never ridden one before.

They are SOOOO fun.

Her has five different gears. 

If you're in gear 1, you're doing most of

the pedaling yourself, but the bike is helping

a little bit. And as you go up in gears, the

bike does more and more.

In fifth gear, you can go SUPER fast without even pedaling.

Celeste was riding her electric unicycle.

She got herself a regular unicycle at the same time

Care Bear got hers and they were trying to learn to

ride at the same time. But it just wasn't working for

Celeste. So she gave up and bought this electric one instead.

It's still HARD to ride, but not AS hard as a traditional uni.

Celeste makes it look easy.

But it's not.

Here's a little video of Celeste flying the kite.

Once again I have amazing videography skills.

Sorry...

Sometimes when you're flying a kite like this,

it gets caught a spiral and just wrecks.

Celeste was teaching me how you can purposely 

put it into a spiral and then quickly yank it out

and keep flying it.

It was tricky, but I ALMOST got the hang of it.

Celeste had asked if I wanted to ride the unicycle.

She mentioned that both her and Robby had wrecked on it.

It made me nervous.

I didn't want to injure myself.

An ER visit was not in my plans.

But it looked so fun.

So I gave it a try.

Holy cow.

It is DIFFICULT.

I think partly because I'm so much taller than Celeste.

But anyway, it was TRICKY.

You control the speed with your weight,

kinda like a segway.

You have to lean forward to make it go and

lean back to make it stop.

It would take a lot more practice on this

thing before it was any fun.

But I'm so glad I tried it.

Because how often do you have the chance

to ride an electric unicycle???

After flying the kite and trying the unicycle, 

Celeste asked if I wanted to take the electric bike 

to the beach so I could see what it was like to ride it really fast. 

Ummmm... Yes, please! 

Since we were riding in the road on the way to the park, 

I kept it to a moderately slow pace.

It was evening time and the beach wasn't crowded, 

so I could go as fast as I wanted.

I put that thing into fifth gear and off I went!

Oh my gosh!

It was SO fun.

The ocean breeze whipping through my hair.

Waves crashing beside me.

Love, love, loved it.

I got it up to 16 mph. 

After that, we headed back to our cute house.

Destiny and I wanted to do a little more shopping

and they have an old "tall ship" that I wanted to see.

We had a nice walk around that part of town.

And got a selfie with the Shark Man statue.

And before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye.

Destiny and I flew out of different airports in Houston.

Boo.

Since I was the one with the rented car,

I drove up her to Bush airport and dropped her off

WAY early for her flight.

Then drove back down to Hobby to catch my flight

home. It was a rainy morning and not fun to drive in.

I actually kinda hydroplaned on the freeway on the way

back to Hobby which was terrifying.

But luckily the car somehow corrected itself

and everything was fine.

I made it in plenty of time for my flight.

Remind me not to pick row 11 on the small

United airplanes.

There is not a window seat there,

just a wall seat.

Boo.

I had to sneak pics through the window in front of me.

Oh, I love looking at clouds from above.

They turned cool colors when the sun started to set.

I landed in Greensboro at 10:30 pm. But there was a big ol' fiasco with my luggage (which was just a carry-on that they made me gate-check!) After more than hour of waiting from them to track down my bag (along with 22 of my fellow passengers), I finally got to head home. Poor Andrew was missing the NFL draft while we were waiting for that luggage issue to be resolved. That's one of his favorite nights of the year!

I had a blast with my sisters. As we were saying our good-byes, Celeste said, "Let's do this again in fifteen years." Ha! I hope we don't wait that long to do it again.