Posted: 6/17/2007 1:00:08 PM EDT
|
I got back today from a little weekend trip, took the wife and kids down to Crystal Beach. Rented a little beach house and spent most of the time down on the beach.We drove down to Fort Travis, its a series of gun batteries used before the civil war all the way up to WWII. The salt air has taken its toll on the structures, the old steel doors to the batteries were falling down and rusted. but what really made me sad was the place was just run down. The old paver stone roads were just covered in weeds, the different gun emplacements(most fenced off) were just covered with overgrowth. You could hardly see most of the structures because of the overgrown reeds, trees etc. There was trash everywhere, broken beer bottles mainly, plastic wrappers, empty soda bottles etc.There was gang graffitti on some areas. I looked down what appeared to be a air shaft to one battery to see garbage floating at the bottom in the water.One set of door to one underground battery was so rusted you could see right into the tunnel. When i got back to the beach house i read alittle more about the place, The article written about the fort claims that the FIRST child born of english descent was at that very fort. It made me angry that a piece of this countries and this states history is going to hell, due to a lack of repair. My son was just at a loss, when we first heard that there was a fort in the area we could visit he was really excieted. But after touring the place you could tell he was just devastated by the way the place looked so run down. |
|
Ya know my mom lives there, Gilchrist actually, I damn near grew up at the beach as a kid and I only live like 30-35 mins away and I've never been there before. I'll make it a point to go there and see. Seawolf Park is pretty cool too as is the Lone Star Flight Museum. Seawolf has a WWII submarine and destroyer on display for you roam around on. The flight museum has an absolutely beautiful B17 along with numerous other military and civilian aircraft. |
| My son would get a blast out of Seawolf Park ( ok, i would too) i think i am going to take the kids down there. Thanks for the info, and yes if you get the chance go to Fort Travis, and then compare the two parks. the pic i saw online of Seawolf and having been to the Fort its like night and day. |
|
Seawolf is cool but it is quite a drive to get there from the Bolivar side of Galveston. You go all the way to south end towards the causeway, easiest way is just take Harbor View all the way immediately from Ferry Rd. Word of caution the sub is SMALL, if you have severe claustrophia issues.....good luck. I'm a big guy but you start at one end walk through the main deck to the other going through tiny hatches and narrow walkways. They have torpedos, some AA guns and other neat stuff too. Including a copy(I'm sure it is anyway) of the USS Hunley. The Destroyer is in original condition so it has rust here and there but you get an idea of what it looked like then, same with the sub. Lots of neat graffiti on the under side of the bunks too so be sure to look for it. I could spend all day in the flight museum though. Everything there is awesome and beautiful. I'd pay good money to ride their B17. There are no official tours either so you can spend as little or as much time as you like inside both of them. |