Houston Trip February 2023: Part II - Pleasure Pier, Kemah Boardwalk, and Houston Zoo

On President's day we drove down to the beach town of Galveston to ride the rides at Pleasure Pier. We got there a little early to play in the sand and watch some waves. The weather was predicted to be in the mid-70's, but it was cloudier and windier than predicted, so it wasn't quite the warm welcome we'd hoped for.

Tyler and Oscar stayed on the beach and found a bunch of shells and a jellyfish.

Allison wanted to play on the playground. We'd been advised to park here rather than paying for parking, but even arriving as early as we did, all the playground parking spaces were already taken.

Once Pleasure Pier opened the kids rode the carousel

and the Frog hopper. They were really picky here about wearing glasses on rides. Allison didn't mind taking hers off, but we purchased croakies so Tyler could keep his on.

It was interesting to see wildlife we'd just learned about at the science center the previous day in the hall of Texas Wildlife.

The kids rode the Texas teacups then we all did the bumper cars. They had small ones for kids and bigger ones for adults. The kid ones were 48 inch max, and the adult ones were 50 inch minimum to drive. I thought it really should have been a 54 inch max for the kid cars and 54 inch minimum to drive the big ones because Tyler could barely reach his pedals on the big ones and could have easily driven the small ones.

Kids did the Rock and Roll. I hadn't brought dramamine so I opted out of this and other high spinning ones.

We then did the swings, and the kids rode the Skyshooter. We also rode the two big thrill rides - Iron Shark and the Texas Star flyer, but I don't have any photos of those. Iron Shark was very similar to Wicked at Lagoon except that it didn't shoot you up the first hill. The Texas Star Flyer was similar to other giant swings we've done, but the wind picked up while we were riding which made it pretty terrifying. For me that just added to the thrill, but Tyler and Oscar didn't like it. 

We paid extra to do two 5D theater adventures. I don't recommend it. They weren't worth the extra cost. They would have been fine as part of the theme park. 

Lines for lunch at the nearby restaurants were crazy, so we ended up just getting standard theme park food back at Pleasure Pier. 

We took one last ride on the carousel before heading to Kemah boardwalk. We'd decided we wanted our last Houston City Pass attraction to be the Zoo instead of doing two days of boardwalks in a row, but I wanted to at least see the Kemah boardwalk.

We didn't do any rides since most were the same and the lines were really long, but we enjoyed the walk around. The clouds had cleared by then, and it felt nice in the low 70's. It was definitely a prettier boardwalk than Galveston minus the fact that there was no sandy beach. The kids played on the playground while I took a little tour.

We went to the Houston zoo for the final full day of our trip. It was by far our warmest day getting up into the low 80's. First we saw some super active river otters and giant fish.

The kids had fun in these tube tunnels.

We saw a Sea Lion show

And a lot of birds.

We got good views of the jaguar.

We also saw giant otters, some kind of primate, cockroaches, and an anaconda. The sign said the anaconda is pretty temperamental, so they always have to send in two zoo employees when it's time for feedings.

The kids had fun in the meerkat tubes while I walked around and  saw a fox.

The kids wanted to play on the playground, and Oscar wanted to just sit (he was coming down with Covid but didn't know it at the time). I walked around to see the rest of the animals, mostly in the African area.

There were some funny animal jokes in the bathroom.

These ladies had some mighty big horns!

I thought it was interesting that these two shared the same habitat.

I then went to see big cats and little cats. I had to bring Allison back here later to see the clouded leopards she'd been so obsessed with when she was in kindergarten.

The kids and Oscar caught up with me when I was seeing the Cheetah. It'd been staring at the gate the whole time I was there but it walked around as the kids arrived.

Everyone was hungry, but all the zoo food was overpriced with big lines. Thankfully I'd packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at breakfast that morning, which tided us over until we could have an early dinner near our new hotel. 

We then saw the elephants

And went indoors for the reptiles since the kids were getting so hot outside. 

My kids could watch hissing and slithering snakes all day.

Tyler liked this giant snake, and Allison liked this small alligator.

We had some aquarium fun before heading back outside.

The kids wanted to play a bit more and go on the carousel. While they did that I went to look at the primates. 

After their ride on the carousel Allison got a drink from the Lion drinking fountain, similar to one I grew up with at Hogle Zoo. 

To finish the trip we checked into our new hotel near the airport, which was much better than the one we had when we first arrived, even though this new hotel was right behind that awful one. Oscar returned the rental car after we had a yummy dinner at Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen. The kids and I slept well that night, though Oscar struggled with chills since he was coming down with Covid. Our flight was delayed the next morning, though we didn't find that out until we got to the airport again, so it meant another long wait at the airport. When we got into Denver it was 7 degrees and snowing outside. After waiting outside in the frigid temperatures trying to catch a shuttle that would take us to where our car was parked, we gave up when two shuttles came by with only room for 2 more people and there were at least 15 ahead of us. We called a Lyft and spent $22 to take us less than two miles to our car. It was a long drive back in the snow with me driving since Oscar was feeling so awful (and tested positive when we got home), but we made it back safely. I actually drove a large part of the long drive behind a large truck, which usually I don't like, but I was grateful for it since the truck blocked me from a lot of the wind and snow. 

During the trip, Tyler was assigned to write a paragraph from each day we were gone. He turned it in the next day and his sweet teacher responded.