Friday, January 4, 2012:  Well, I started the new year with furnace problems!  Woke up Tuesday with no heat - yeah, I know, no sympathy for Ottawans facing the kind of weather you've been having recently - but still, a problem.  Two guys staying in the park came over and checked out the guts behind the exterior panel - so I learned a whole lot about circuit boards and sail switches and propane flow and ignition switches and fans - very useful.  I also got onto rv.net, an invaluable resource, where I found a discussion forum where another rver presented the same issue I was having (fan goes on, but no heat, then turns off after three minutes). That guy had just let his propane tank get completely empty, then filled up - so others suggested that there might be air in the system and he should turn the furnace off and on up to thirty times, to flush it out.  I had also run right out of propane the night before and then filled up, so I tried the switching off and one thing, and the heat kicked in on the thirtieth time! It was fine all night and the next morning.  Wednesday I went on our weekly excursion with Dora and others, and when I got back, around 5:30, the furnace was off again.  Took it in to a repair place in Dickinson (a town about twenty miles away) on Thursday, and they took fifteen minutes to fix it - said it was a fried wire. (Charged me $6.95 for the part, $100 for labour - minimum of an hour - not a surprise) Got it home, it worked for an hour, then stopped again.  Sooo - I drove back this morning and they checked it out more thoroughly, discovered that it was an intermittent problem which they therefore had difficulty identifying - but finally identified the sail switch as the issue.  Funny, half the stuff I  read online, in forums and online manuals, talked about the sail switch - I had looked for it but couldn't find it.  The mechanic said that it was buried behind other cables - so they put in a new one and the problem appears to be solved! They gave me a break on the cost. I'm going to hang on to the ceramic heater that another rver lent me for another day or so, just in case . . .  As I expected when I jumped into this life, the rv community is full of friendly, wonderful people who are eager to lend a hand when someone is having a problem.  Anyone who thinks that I have no support here should pay attention to that!
Since I was out in my rv anyway, I drove over to Baytown (about fifteen miles from Galveston, in a slightly different direction) and picked up some yarn from a store that had what I wanted (I visited another store in another town on Wednesday with the group, and they were out of that particular yarn), then decided to visit Moody Gardens. [GPS, I love you - no more getting lost]
Moody Gardens consists of three pyramids, each one housing a different museum:  the Aquarium, the Tropical Rainforest, and the Discovery Museum (basically a science museum, I believe - I didn't get to it - ran out of time).  I'm a bit jaded, I guess - museums are fun, but there's a sameness about them - didn't see much that was unique to Galveston - I really could have been in Toronto or Melbourne - but great to see, nonetheless.
After the pyramids, as soon as it got dark, I went to the Festival of Lights, which is an annual event here in Moody Gardens.  Basically, it is composed of wire figures covered with lights, along a winding pathway around the pyramids and other buildings (takes about half an hour to walk the entire way).  The figures are quite eclectic - everything from fields of flowers to fairy tale characters to Santa to Sponge Bob Squarepants!  At one point, the story of the nativity is told over a loudspeaker, with figures lighting up to illustrate the story.  The whole thing was quite magical!

You can see the wire butterfloies which come alive in the evening during the Festival of Lights!

Cute penguins

Awesome colour!

That gorgeous bird in a palm tree similar to others around town.

From the third floor of the Rainforest Pyramid

Nature imitating art!

Cool Christmas tree made up of pots of poinsettas, inside  the central building of Moody Gardens

Buddies

It was seriously a fantastic presentation - marred only by the ironic sign . . . 

The Star!

Bethlehem

The three wise men

A tunnel of lights