July 4th weekend on Galveston island what could have been a total letdown became a beautiful evening!

Now I know nobody in their right mind goes to Galveston island for the pristine clean beaches. Folks that don't know any better might, but Galveston's beaches, even though they are technically tropical, are not exactly Chamber of Commerce photo quality if you know what I mean...

Now when I venture onto the island, it is typically for fishing, or for a FAST trip when just any beach will do. Now I am not saying Galvestons beaches are toxic dumps like you see all too often in other parts of the country, they just aren't wide expanses of clean white sand kissed by blue waters with waving palms gently swaying in the breeze....

No Galveston Island's beaches are a thin strip of typically tan / yellow sand, slogged by murky / muddy waters stirred up by the spew coming off of the Mississippi river and flowing westward along the coastal bend, thankfully heading back out to sea and wafting off typically before it gets to Padre Island, but that is a story for another blog entry....

The beaches on Galveston's Gulf side are typically crowded with urban / tourist bustle jammed up on them, overflowing trash can that apparently my county property taxes are just not enough to keep emptied, and stone jetties that have the saving grace of being some fair, but not fantastic spots to fish. Hey if they were fantastic, I wouldn't be telling anyone else where they were now would I?

I digress yet again.... Funny how that happens.

So anyway, I have been avoiding the island as of late due to a BIG, overwhelming problem, that isn't going away any time soon...

Seaweeed. miles, and miles of seaweed has washed ashore, bringing with it unfortunate inhabitants of the seaweed community that in turn once washed ashore and out of the water either become easy pickings for the flocks of seagulls that is ever present....


Oh, not those guys? Sorry...

I meant the ever present shore bird kind, not the bad early 80s pop band... Well like I was saying, either the little critters became food for the seagulls, or crabs and whatnot, OR and there is no shortage of them, they simply died off and rotted in the Texas summer sun...

Did I mention there are MILES and MILES of this stuff along the beaches in coastal Texas right now?

The stench is something awful. You figure the parks department would dredge this stuff up and haul it off right?

Wrong...

Nope, they are taking earth movers with giant bucket rakes and simply raking the stuff out of the main part of the beach, and building huge piles. I know the intent is to build and compress the mounds, sand them up real good, and build basically artificial sand dunes to further help protect the island, it's inhabitants, and points further inland from the devastating impacts of the next hurricane which is sure to come.

Mind you, we live in the evacuation zone, so I fully appreciate and am grateful for this effort they are putting into damage control, but boy it messes up that beach...

The giant mounds stink like giant heaps of what it is. Rotting seaweed and dead aquatic animals...

I am in no way overly sensitive to smell, but boy this is offensive...

The view from Seawall BLVD southward you can clearly see the

seaweed collecting at the surf line.

The giant stinking piles at the edge of the beach just before the

seawall.

So with the stench driving us off of the east side of the island, we head west, toward the inter coastal waterway, and pull off the side of the road to a good fishing spot closer to the Galveston causeway, and enjoy just watching the setting sun play over the water and all of the sudden, the Chamber of Commerce moments come out in watery abundance!

Google Auto Awesome did its thing to this photo, but honestly

I can't see how any processing could have made the view any

more beautiful! What a view!