First day of summer.

I think the weather has finally turned the proverbial corner. Today is wonderfully warm, bordering on hot, with blue sky and a tropical breeze. The weather god finally looked down on us and said Bam! Summer! And I love it.

We went to the Kemah waterfront today and had lunch at Landry's...... sitting outside in the sun, without even an umbrella to shade the table. (In another couple of weeks, an umbrella-less table will be unthinkable.) We watched the boats going by, and there were a lot of them. Seems that everyone else in the area knows that summer has begun. People were walking the boardwalk in shorts and sandals..... which they do during December and January also, but now their arms aren't folded protectively across their chests trying to keep the "winter" breezes away.

Georgeous day..... perfectly gorgeous. Now this is why we live here... for days like this...... fresh-caught seafood for lunch at a waterfront restaurant surrounded by sailboats while the Yankees up north are layering on sweaters and gloves and scarves while they're trying to remember where they put the snow shovel. (My apologies. But I can say all of that because I used to be one of those Yankees.)

Some of the restaurants on the Kemah waterfront are undergoing renovations... and one of our favorites (The Crab House) has changed its name to The Chart House. We tried to go there for lunch, but we got there at 11:00 and they don't open up now till noon. We looked over their new menu while we were there--- seems that they raised their prices. (Someone has to pay for the new sign, new menus, new name on all those matchbooks.) We weren't happy with the menu prices, and didn't think it was worth waiting an hour just to try the new restaurant. If we were going to pay those prices for lunch, then I don't want to be sitting outside on a wooden deck hoping that a seagull won't perch (or worse!) on my shoulder. The prices at the old Crab House were reasonable...... the menu prices at the Chart House are off the charts-- hence, the name.

There are plenty of restaurants there to choose from, all in a row along the boardwalk surrounding the Kemah waterfront. Easy enough to just walk down the stairs of the off-the-charts restaurant and walk into the next one. All the seafood restaurants there are delicious.... I guess people just pick their favorites, according to decor and atmosphere.

The wooden roller coaster is up and running..... as it was all "winter" long. I think they call it the Boardwalk Bullet. It looks like the old monster roller coaster that was up at NY's Coney Island. Not something that I'd like to try. We watched it take a few runs, and you can hear the riders screaming for mercy as the coaster goes down all the very steep drops of the track. I would imagine that all the people who live in the neighborhoods surrounding the Kemah Boardwalk can hear all those screams day and night when the boardwalk park is open.

One by one, those quaint old houses in Kemah are being bought up by the owner of the Boardwalk area. The houses are torn down, making way for parking lots. Not a good thing. Kemah used to be such a sleepy little seaside town until Mr. MoneyBags got the idea to turn that town into a destination. People now come from all over the state to vacation in Kemah. And you would think that could have been a good thing for the town because it brings in a lot of money, but it doesn't work that way. All the money coming in goes right into the pockets of Mr. MoneyBags. By now, his pockets must reach down to his toes.

We used to go into Kemah for lunch or dinner all the time, but now we try and go just on Sunday mornings---- mostly everyone else is just getting out of church, so the parking lot is more than half-empty. We have an early lunch there at 11:00, and by the time we're ready to leave at 1:00 or 1:30, we can see the cars circling the parking lots looking for an empty spot. And usually, there are more tourists on the waterfront than locals.

My goodness, we've lived here so long that we're now locals. No one has called us "transplanted Yankees" in many years.