Saturday, February 28^th
We got a late start to Crystal's wedding and Remy wanted to check in at the Hotel first. She used a coupon to get us to the Mariott Spring Hill Suites. We had some trouble finding it, so it was around 4:30 when we started out for the wedding. I had plotted the trip from the west side, and just printed out the directions to the hotel at the last minute. I remembered the Crystal Spring Events being along highway 1488, but wasn't sure it was exactly on it, so I asked the girl at the desk to verify it was on 1488. She googled it and said it was on that road, so we set out quickly for it. Remy's window has some kind of wax or something on it that won't come off easy and we were driving into the sun looking for "Old Hempstead Road". I kept telling her I didn't think it was this far from 45. When we finally reached Hempstead we knew we had gone too far. So I pulled over and looked at the map I had saved to my tablet. It too appeared to put the place on 1488 across from a Magnolia Blvd that I thought I remembered seeing real close to Conroe. So I headed back there, but we never found either one. After 2 1/2 hours of searching we gave up and ate the "Wings and More" next to the hotel. Mary sent us some photos from the wedding we missed.

Sunday, February 29^th
I'm not sure her thought process, but Remy decided she wanted to go to mass early instead of waiting until we go to Lucy's. So we asked at the desk as we checked out for a local Catholic Church. His search came up with a St. Jude a few miles away. So we had him print us out a map to get there and we quickly headed off. I found the main roads relatively easy, but when we were at the point of making the final turn to the road the church was on, we noticed that roads name was not on the map. We made three or four guesses on which road it was without luck. We found lots of churches, just not the catholic one we were looking to find.

Monday
Remy had set up a cooking lesson with several of her long time ago friends from her nursing home volunteering days to teach them how to make pancit. So for this day I had done some googling on hiking trails and museums. I had settled on a city park outdoor museum: The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden. This is at the New Orleans Museum of the Arts, but is a 5 acre garden with about 60 works of art mostly funded by the namesakes of the museum. There is plenty of parking near the entrance adjacent to the New Orleans Museum of Arts.

I had a mapquest directions printed out, but the exit from I-10 wasn't that clear on how I pick of City Park Ave after I take the exit 231A and I didn't make the first turn since it didn't have a sign identifying that as the road I was looking for, but that is the one. After a few other options not identified, I took one. Eventually I found Carrollton Ave, which I new ran by the museum, but in my confusion I turned right instead of left. When I reached the levy, I asked at a gas station and headed back to the park. I parked next to the museum and had little trouble finding the sculpture garden, since it was also on the back side of the museum where I happened to park. So on this Goodle MAP of the museum area it was on the "of" area of the google map.

After an hour or two of meandering in the sculpture museum area, I decided to do a little walk around the city park big lake area. There were a lot of families having pic-nics in the park which I found surprising for a Monday. Also lots of bicycle riders and joggers. I was more interested in the wildlife and the huge trees.

When I returned the lesson was already over and I got to taste their product. We called around for the best prices on the boiled crawfish. Ordered 40 pounds to take back, 30 for us and 10 for my boss.

Tuesday
We did lunch buffet at Zydeca and picked up the crawfish to bring back. I left the ice chests opened in the back so they would cool off some more.

Lucy/Edward had read about a China Lights display in their Sunday paper which they thought was the sculpture walk I was planning to do. So after reading up on it it sounded interesting. Remy was quite interested in seeing it, even though it might test her walking ability. So we headed back to the City Park area, but this time I had a better idea of how to get there. The China Lights Exhibit is at the Botanical Garden area which is just adjacent the city park. There was some concern for rain on the only night we had available, but it held off until we were heading back already. The displays were amazing. Here is the description from their web site:

China Lights
More than 30 extraordinary, blazingly bright silk covered structures fill the Botanical Garden. Hundreds of lanterns to delight you at every turn. Picture an incredible glowing dragon 131-feet long! Or a three-story, lit-from-within pagoda towering high enough to be seen from almost any vantage point in the garden. Plus dozens of dazzlingly colorful lighted displays created by a team of artisans and technical staff from Sichuan Tianyu, located in Zigong, China.

Wednesday
We planned to leave around 9:00, but it was closer to 9:30. We also were delayed by the hight school for the buses turning, etc. We arrived at Lou's in Houston around 3:30. I missed the turn for Route 3 and got on 45, but it was messed up like she said and we had to go further south and then back up north due to the closed exits. Gave her some of the crawfish and rested for awhile before heading back to Corpus Christi.