A rodeo, a boardwalk, a Challenger 7 Memorial and killer mosquitoes, but not in that order

Kemah Boardwalk

OK, I’m officially sick of rain and yuck. On Tuesday we had planned to visit Kemah Boardwalk and ride the rides and see the sights. Denny and I had our heart set on riding the Boardwalk Bullet wooden roller coaster and when we arrived there was a big sign that it was down for maintenance.

“Enjoy the other rides,” the sign said. The other rides were pretty lame (well, there was that tall ride that drops you at a zillion miles an hour, but I’m not doing that).

(This post is actually a day behind time. By the time I got home Tuesday night I was too tired to write, so this went up a day late. Ditto for Wednesday’s post, which will go up sometime Thursday. Plus there are bonus photos from Tuesday's adventures below this post)

The other problem with Kemah on Tuesday was that the only rides really being used were us by the mosquitoes, which were relentless. Even one park worker asked us if we were being ‘bitten.’

Sistas on a walk

Later, at a nearby visitor’s center we were told that these were “hawk” mosquitoes. Well, hawk or not, we were tired of them and abandoned Kemah pretty quickly. We may try to go there again on Thursday if the weather is better and the mosquitoes don’t carry us off.

So we punted.

We drove to a designated bird watching area where we did see an egret and three Roseate Spoonbills and had a nice walk, but eventually the mosquitoes found us again and we had to escape from a venue for the second time.

After that we ate lunch in the car as the heavy rain mist filled the air along with the mosquitoes.

We saw a sign for the “Challenger 7 Memorial Park” and decided to go pay a visit. It was a disappointment as it was basically a small city park with just a marble block in honor of the tragic Shuttle Mission.

Bird watching

Once again we made an attempt to visit the headquarters of the 75^th Division, but were turned away by a locked door at the visitor’s center. I appealed to an Air Force sergeant, who was very nice, but couldn’t help us. A member of the visitor’s center returned a call I made to their afterhours number, but then didn’t return the call as promised. So, for now at least, we have given up on visiting Red’s old division.

Diane and Denny and the Vomit Comet

I took a photo of Diane and Denny under the “Vomit Comet” outside Ellington Airport. So with all that done, we decided to head to the rodeo.

Traffic was starting to pick up and we arrived at the parking lot about 4:30 p.m., more than two hours before the scheduled start of the rodeo. Fortunately, because the paid parking lot was in the next zip code from Reliant Stadium we took full advantage of the free shuttle from the parking lot to the activities outside the stadium.

We wandered around outside the stadium looking at the hundreds of vendors and then took a rest watching the cow and bull judging in an auxiliary building at the Reliant Plaza.

My favorite line was the bull judge who was evaluating the championship bulls and said “I like this bull, but I would like to see better definition in the testicles.” For the rest of the night I was annoying my wife and sister-in-law with my observation of bull testicles at the rodeo.

Bull judging at the rodeo

Finally it was time to enter the arena and get ready for the rodeo, which began promptly at 6:45 p.m. There was an impressive entrance by dozens of horses and riders and suddenly it was time for the rodeo to begin.

The format was similar, but not identical to the rodeo we saw in San Antonio. Both rodeos had points we preferred, but we certainly enjoyed both.

Mutton bustin’, which is a bunch of kids trying to ride a sheep for 8 seconds was not as successful in Houston as it was in San Antonio, but still fun to watch.

One event that was different and enjoyable was the chuck wagon races, which pitted wagons pulled by four-horse teams in a race around the arena floor. It was really exciting and I really enjoyed it.

Chuck wagon racing

Very soon, the events were done and it was time for “Alabama” the country and western group. We were at first worried that we would be blasted out of the stadium as we were in San Antonio, but the music was loud, but not oppressively so and we stayed for about the first 45 minutes of the concert.

Alabama

We did bail while the concert was still going on to beat the traffic out of the arena so we could get home at a semi-reasonable hour, which turned out to be 11:10 p.m. Even with the early departure we ran into some moderate traffic including a bicycle taxi that was driving in the left lane despite the heavy traffic.

Despite the bad weather, the mosquitoes and the disappointment of not getting into the 75^th Division we had a pretty good day.