Spring Break on Galveston Island
We finally get a camping spot in Galveston Island State Park
In Mission: Wanderlust, I write and podcast about our family’s travel adventures and the things that we have learned along the way.
It had been a Texas bucket list item.
Every spring we looked at the availability of camping sites in Galveston Island State Park so that we could take the 90-minute trek down to the island for a weekend camping trip. And every spring we discovered that every available weekend we had was already booked.
So, while I managed two pre-move adventures down to the island during our last months in Texas, our family wasn’t going to get a camping trip to the Gulf, at least not that part of the Gulf.1
Then a few months ago, our daughter asked if we could go to Texas for their spring break. I quickly reminded her that our spring breaks did not match up with her friends’ breaks and they would have school. She didn’t care. She wanted to spend the last week in March in Texas and she would find a way to make it work with her friends. I agreed to make whatever arrangements that I could for our son and his friends and so we loosely planned a seven-day trip to and from Houston, with two additional days in St. Louis so I could run the half-marathon before heading back home.
My husband wasn’t quite as thrilled with the plans. Last summer, the kids and I took off for twelve days of travel to and from Texas and he wasn’t eager to be without his family for another week. So he looked up available spots in Galveston, booked four nights, and declared that if the rest of his family was going to Texas, he was willing to drive down with us and the camper and turn it into a spring break camping trip, a dream that I thought we had left behind us when we moved back to Indiana.
Our bucket list item was finally fulfilled.
Our teenager made the decision to spend the entire time in the Houston area with her friends, so we dropped her off with one of those friends along the I-45 corridor and picked up one of our son’s friends for the night. Then we drove through Houston to the end of I-45, driving along the Galveston Island beaches on our way to the state park, the boys asking if we would be returning to the beaches once we set up camp.
Jeff and I smiled at each other because there would be no need. When we pulled into our beach side spot, we could hear the waves from the Gulf of Mexico crashing into the shore.2
The next morning, after a breakfast of bacon and eggs, Jeff took the boys down to the beach to play in the water while I completed the first of two short pre-race runs on the beach. When I returned to where the boys were digging in the sand, Jeff and I took a walk down the beach and I put my feet in the nearly 70-degree water. After all, I may not love saltwater and I have an unreasonable fear of large waves, but I can’t resist a good walk along a shoreline.
We enjoyed early afternoon fun at the campground before returning one friend to his home in Houston, picking up another of our son’s friends, and returning to the state park for another night of campfire, s’mores, and waking up the next morning to do it all over again with another child that we adopted for the day.
That night our friends and former next-door neighbors drove down to pick up their son and help us celebrate Jeff’s birthday with a dinner of grilled burgers, fried potatoes, and s’mores.
The boys convinced us to let the friend miss another day of school, so we kept him for one more night, with the boys relaxing and playing games in the camper while I went for another beach run the next morning. We worked our way back to Houston for the third time to eat dinner with friends and finally pick up our daughter, who returned with us to Galveston and finally got to see the Gulf for herself. On the way, we made our third stop at Texas staple Buc-ee’s so that our daughter could finally make her stop at our kids’ favorite gas station.
Did we take advantage of everything that we possibly could inside the state park? Not even close. While we fully enjoyed the beach side and time in the water (before it got too cold), the bay side offers hiking, fishing, and kayaking, none of which were ideal activities in the limited time that we had with the unpredictable weather. And while the weather wasn’t great, we didn’t let it stop us from having fun during the day and enjoying three campfires during our four nights there. Galveston Island State Park may have been more basecamp than destination vacation, but we left feeling like we still got to enjoy some of what the beautiful state park has to offer.
It may be our last family camping trip in Texas for a while, but I’m glad Jeff decided that it was important enough to make the trip down to Texas with us so we could add it to our list of visited Texas state parks.
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Galveston Island State Park has two campgrounds, beachside and bayside. For those preferring to spend their time kayaking or fishing, the bayside is the top choice. Even though I’m not a huge fan of saltwater, I still wanted to be closer to the beach.
Well, they finally opened that side of the state park again! Good! I’m glad y’all were able to come down to visit!