Moving on... my little sister Karoline just turned 11, and she had a birthday party that was a day full of tours of interesting things in Houston. They got to tour the Mrs. Baird's bread factory and see all the loaves flying around and eat freshly-made bread! Unfortunately, I could only make it to the last tour of the day due to a little thing called working-business-hours, so I missed out on all the hair-netted, hard-hatted bread factory fun.
I did get to go on a tour of the Houston ship channel though! The Houston ship channel is east of Houston in the industrial side of town, and I had never even been in the area before. The ship channel is a major reason why Houston is such a thriving business center today, so it was fun to go see what happens over there.
The birthday party girls waiting for the boat
Houston Ship Channel!
We rode on a little boated called the Sam Houston, which thankfully had a nice air-conditioned inside!
Once everyone was situated on the boat, we headed off into the Ship Channel!
We saw a ton of big ships,
This one was from Singapore...
This one was from Virginia...
This one was from Nassau...
Those blue rectangles are the doors to the big cargo holds. They just open them up and the cranes go right into the ship!
We got to watch this ship being unloaded!
There were plenty of things to see besides big ships! The photo below is the spot where Sam Houston captured Mexican General Santa Anna when Texas was gaining its independence from Mexico. It's hard to see it, but right to the left of that center tree is a little concrete plaque that marks the spot!
We saw a coal distribution facility...
We rode under Loop 610 (a big highway in Houston)...
After a while, we went back inside to sit in the A/C for a bit. It's HOT in Houston!
We rode by the biggest recycling plant I've ever seen. They recycle cars, planes, trains, and even small buildings at this place!
We even saw a drywall factory:
Towards the end of the tour, they offered sodas to everyone. The little girls were pretty excited about it. Haha!
They were so cute... they even had a "birthday toast" for Karoline:
I really enjoyed seeing a new part of Houston, and the girls thought the whole thing was so interesting! I'd definitely recommend the ship channel tour if you're in Houston - it was just so fun to see everything!
We went on that when I was 8 or so and it was so interesting. I'm glad to see they still offer the tour b/c a few weeks ago my husband and I went by the ship channel and I told him about it and said I'd check to see if they still did cause he wants to go. Awesome!
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