Galveston Island State Park

Galveston Island state park was wonderful. It had just everything that we needed and so close. The comfort station was near and not too far away, and it was only a three minute drive when we wanted to go to the beach. The water was awesome, and one of me and Lucys favourite things to do was walk around the beach to look for Sand Dollars and shells. Lucy is the shell master though. Me and her have invented currency in shells. Shell Currency. We buy shells from one another that do not belong in our currency. Lucy normally would only collect shells that she likes and does not already have, but now she collects most currency shells so that she can buy more things from me. Me and Lucy also used some fabric from old shorts that don't fit me to make Lala and Purple Bear new dresses.

Anyway, the beach itself is wonderful, and it seems to have some sandbars. Me and Lucy walk out for quite awhile and finally the water came back to our knees. We never even ended up getting to a spot that we could not touch. There were tons of waves there though. We would go shell hunting on the beach but when we went in the water it was harder because of the waves. We stayed at the beach most of the end of the day on Friday, but we went there earlier on Saturday because we were going for a nature walk. We started by walking, stopping and talking about some of the things around the area. First we started talking about how many rivers that are along way away from Galveston, are connected to Galveston Bay, which is connected to the saltwater of the Gulf of Mexico. The water coming from all the way up the rivers in Lake Houston and other places are freshwater, and the water coming from the Gulf of Mexico is saltwater, so the water in Galveston Bay is brackish because it is a mix of both fresh and saltwater. They also talked about how, even if people in Galveston don’t litter, the current from up the river will bring all the litter from up the water to them because the Bay is the last place for it to travel. That is one of there bigger problems.

Next we talked about turtles and why we need to recycle our fishing lines because turtles and other animals can get caught in them. We also learned that after the turtle is born and it leaves from the beach that it’s born at the rangers at the beach don’t see it for fourteen years, until it comes back to lay it’s eggs. We thought that it was awesome that a turtle could remember where is was born after it’s fourteen years being away from the beach.

After that we were finished talking and it was time to start sifting for little animals. The ranger explained the things that we needed to know about the materials that we were going to use. Then we started. The main thing that we were using was the biggish boxes that were carried along with us to the beach. The ranger explained that we were to put four of five scopes of sand into them and the shake the box slightly in the water. All the sand in the box will come out in this sifting process. That leaves all the little creatures, shells and rocks to look at. The main things that people were finding were blood worms (named after their colour), polychaete worms (strange worms that have shells attached all over them), and coquina clams (not as common as the blood worms). The blood worms are really tiny red worms that don’t actually have anything that is really relating to blood, and are just named that because they are so red. The polychaete worm are pretty big worms that get many shells attached to them so it looks really strange. The coquina clams are really interesting clams because of what they do. If they are on the very edge of the beach and the waves are splashing on them, if they don’t like it, they will stick out their very small tongue and slowly bury themselves into the sand. Everything else we found was just cool shells and pieces of sand dollars.

After Galveston we went to Palmetto State Park near Gonzalez Texas. We were still relaxing so we had no activities that were specifically planned but we did go hiking. We also ended up seeing some interesting new animals. Mama saw a rattlesnake while she was hiking on a trail and though the path was wide she didn’t want to pass it. The snake ended up just going into the grass so she could keep walking. Lucy and I ended up seeing a small scorpion at the playground. It was like a brownish-clear colour and did not move. The playground was also awesome. The swings were actually the best part because the rest of it was kind of too small for Lucy and I to go in. The swings went really high and we really liked them because of their spot at the park; they were in front of very pretty trees and most of the time it shaded us from the sun. The swings were very fast and went very high, and were also very comfortable.

Sifting