204. Galveston, Galveston County

This has got to be the most Miami Vice looking building I have ever seen in my life. I can totally see Crockett and Tubbs walking out, discussing their next lead after being reamed out by the LT (if I had Edward James Olmos yelling at me, I’d be suitably cowed. No lie). But, of course, this is the morning shot. I rolled into town at about midnight to this place in acceptable, but not preferred lighting. I didn’t care for the photos and wasn’t in a big rush or anything so I decided to take it easy and let photography wait until sunrise. There wouldn’t be much to do because the monuments here were nonexistent. But the night called and I still had things to do.

There were two things on the agenda: get a cache and sign some challenges. There are a bunch of challenges on Galveston Island (did I mention that Galveston is an island?) on the southern end that I have either completed or qualify for. I ended up leaving them for another time. It was late, I was tired, and I had already looked for one challenge today in the darkness. I didn’t feel like hunting down more at the moment. As for the cache, there was only one choice that would do. There are around 250 webcam caches on Earth, a hundred in the United States. There are only three in Texas and all three of them are in Galveston. This was my goal. I headed over to the Harbor Cam Cache to find myself by a harbor. It took a few minutes to scope out my bearings and figure where and how to do this. I had actually constructed a banner of sorts out of PVC, neon poster board, and, after a failure of my giant Sharpie, duck tape (as a minor aside because I am sometimes a pedant, yes, it is “duck” tape. The string fabric the strip and adhesive are attached to is duck cloth, hence the name. It wasn’t until much later that it was discovered that the supporting cloth made the tape good for use with duct work, causing the misappellation “duct” tape). My late night assembly, open trunk and, oddly enough, a passing coyote ended up putting me under a little police scrutiny. A quick explanation of what I was doing (trying to get photographed in the web cam) and his obvious acclimation to all sorts of late night Galveston shenanigans, drunken or otherwise, made his eye move along quickly to real somethings or other elsewhere so I found my spot and waited. And voila!

Ecce homo. There in the lower left hand corner, a grey and tan blob against the white and blue building. If you look closely, you can see the yellow banner, but it is obscured by the lamp post. Doesn’t matter, though. My first webcam and my official cache for The Project had been secured! And did I forget to mention that this represents 80% completion of the Project? Since I was nearby, I decided to grab a second one…

It you look closely in The Strand Cam Cache, there I am, standing in the giant chair in the lower left quadrant of the center of the photo (or the upper right of the lower left quadrant, depending on your point of view). I’m a bit harder to see and if I did it again I’d probably stand more in the center foreground, on pavement illuminated by the light, and not be washed out against that big white background. But it’s done and that’s that. There’s a third webcam at the end of a jetty, jutting out into the gulf, but I chose to skip that one. I didn’t think there’s any illumination there and, to be honest, I was tired. Two webcams was enough for now. And I have more than enough reason to come back to the Houston area and Galveston specifically. I got a few hours sleep, photographed the courthouse, and then got rolling back across the bridge toward Houston.

Thalassa, indeed. I drove up and around, shadowing the industrial constructions of the Carcinogenic Coast, until I pulled off the highway and came to rest at my next destination…