Things finally came together for a departure from Galveston to points eastbound. The same Galveston causeway bridge that got us last week was at it again this morning with 2 train delays. But that was our last delay and we had a nice 72-mile run to Port Arthur. You can just about always plan on seeing some large ships/tankers (actually, I guess all "ships" are large) crossing the Galveston Bay Ship Channel.
There seems to also always be a few fires in this stretch. This one was in the High Island area.
An interesting bit of trivia on High Island - there is a slight 40-foot elevation of this small terrain area, but that qualifies it as the highest elevation within 100 miles. This is seriously flat terrain as far as the eye can see with not much to look at except some oil wells and grazing cows. As I have noted in previous blogs, Rhonda loves cows and she got some shots of more Texas longhorns.
Here's our anchorage at Taylor Outfall canal. As anchorages go, this is a great one - about 14 feet of water, plenty of room to swing, no traffic, etc. Again, notice the flat terrain extending "forever." We noticed that within a very short period of time after we dropped anchor, there was a security boat checking us out, probably from the refinery close by. That's Clint and Linda's Silverton in the distance. It was a lovely evening but I have to admit we were very disappointed with the election results. Obama really scares me, but I'll not ruin a perfectly good blog opportunity with any more political discussion.
We departed the next morning, with "Port" Arthur to "port," a large refinery town which looks to have a significant shrimping/fishing fleet also. We passed the fleet downwind and got a serious confirmation by smell that they have definitely been catching a few recently.
We arrived Lake Charles (another big refinery and shipping town) in the afternoon after a 62-mile day. You normally see numerous tankers but today we only saw two, this one from Singapore.
The city of Lake Charles has a great waterfront development in progress on the official "Lake Charles" with a few slips for transient boaters at Bor Du Lac Marina.
And a view of the lake from the park's waterfront.
We had a nice dinner at Luna's and a long walk to get there and back. Tomorrow is a big decision day. Clint has a mechanic coming from Baton Rouge to work on his generator. If we don't leave Lake Charles soon, we could be stuck here for 5 days to wait out weather.
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