Gracie Does Galveston

As I type, my husband and our dog Gracie are at the beach in Galveston. The public and private beaches in Galveston allow pets on the beach, and a lot of the non-public beaches on the west side of the Island allow horses and cars as well.

We used to go out to Galveston on a regular basis, to enjoy the beach and to surf-fish. Over the years, however, the private beaches have gotten more built up with houses and condos, and finding a quiet place to relax in the sun is quite difficult now. We never did go to the public beaches because they're filled with tourists and lots of kids. I'd rather not go now, to any of the Galveston beaches, being that the once-quiet miles of beachfront are not scattered with new homes. Even after the devastating hurricane season last year, people continue to build on beachfront properties that have no seawall protection. And because the last few years have brought so many ocean storms across the gulf, the amount of seaweed on the Galveston beaches is just too much to endure. (Too much to look at, step over, and too much to smell.)

Gracie loves the beach, and she loves car rides. Or maybe I should say she loves doing anything and going anywhere with my husband. She prefers his company to mine and she likes to have him all to herself. She is a guy's dog, no doubt about it. The cats are all "momma's boys," so I guess it evens out.


We will be meeting with the realtor in Lake Livingston one more time. Even though we spent the entire day on Monday looking at lake-front homes, we still didn't see everything there was to see. And we still haven't found a lake-front house without a major glitch. So Marie has found us at least a dozen more properties to see and she'll get everything set up for us so we can do another one-day trip up there. The drive to Livingston doesn't seem like such an ordeal, being that the ride is just an hour and a half away from here. Plus it's an easy drive, on just two major highways, so I can see myself being able to drive up there by myself without getting lost on lonely back-roads. I've been driving since my 16th birthday and I still don't like to drive without knowing exactly where I'm going.

So many houses to look at...... I didn't think this whole project would take as long as it has. But as I've said before-- I'm glad that my husband has a clear head about all of these properties. To date, if this had been up to me, I would've bought the mountain-top cottage in Comfort, the too-large lakeside house in Nacogdoches, and the storybook cabin on the private peninsula on Lake Livingston.