Boyds Untethered

The Ocean Star is a retired “jackup drilling rig” that offers a fun, hands on way to learn about the offshore oil and gas industry in a comfortable and accessible facility.  The museum features three floors of models, exhibits, equipment and interactive displays illustrating the story of offshore exploration and production.  This self guided museum offers visitors the unique opportunity to board an actual offshore rig. 

Ready for a day at the beach.... but don’t have a chair? No problem, there are beach service vendors, in Galveston, who will rent you what you need. Each of them has the franchise a section of the beach…. 10 blocks, I think. They set up each morning, that looks like a good beach day…. and will provide you a couple of chairs and an umbrella, $35 for the whole day.

You know you’re living in the south when you have a Magnolia Tree growing in your yard. This one is right outside our apartment building. Magnolias are named after French botanist Pierre Magnol.  It is an ancient genus…. appearing before bees evolved, the flowers are theorized to have evolved to encourage pollination by beetles. There are over 210 different species of magnolia…. I believe this one is a Little Gem, also known as the Southern Magnolia.

Driving across southern Louisiana on US 90 we saw lots of rice paddies. These r ice fields are pristine enough for a picture postcard. Long, straight rows of bright green grain protrude from crystal clear water, with not a weed in sight. But one thing looks out of place. Between every row is a long line of traps with bright orange tops that poke out of the water every few feet.  They are there because the farmer is growing two crops…. rice and crawfish. Rice has been a mainstay of Louisiana agriculture since the 18th century. It is one of the few crops the wet, silty soil can support.  For years, crawfish was a wild product, harvested mostly in the Atchafalaya Basin between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.  But in the 1970s and ’80s, farmers realized that they could make extra money by managing and harvesting the crawfish that already lived in their flooded rice fields.