Yesterday Strawberry and I went on our first "long distance" date to the Kemah Boardwalk Jazz Fest.  It was the first time I had driven that distance since my bypass surgery and the two hour drive was a little tough, but I didn't say anything.  All the parking lots were full, so we decided to go ahead and park in the parking garage.  Our space overlooked the yacht parking lot, sometimes known as a marina.




The parking garage entrance to Kemah Boardwalk was also the entrance to the hotel.  As tempted as I was, I decided to let her get out of the hotel so she could watch the jazz festival.




After we found the stage, we decided that the first order of business was to get a drink at The Flying Dutchman Restaurant bar.  As we were drinking, we watched the boats and birds pass by.  I tried to get both pelicans, but one flew off before I could get zoomed in.



After our drink, we went to sit in front of the stage and listen to one of the performances.



The next performance the singer asked the audience to get up and dance.  I tried to get Strawberry to dance, but she's still too sore from her ordeal, so we just watched.



After watching for awhile, I decided to take her to The Aquarium restaurant.  You'll see her here near the end of the video.



We went up the stairs to wait for a table and got some footage of the whole small aquarium.



Rather than wait for a table to eat since there was a long wait, we decided to just go to the bar for one more drink.  We walked over to the large aquarium which had some larger fish, shark, and an eel and got some footage of that.




Since there's a new ordinance against smoking inside, we decided to go out to the balcony to smoke and we watched the boats pass by.






While we were out there, I decided to get an overview shot of the Kemah Boardwalk from the The Aquarium balcony.



I ended up getting sick from the heat, so we went back in for awhile.  I had to make a mad dash for the bathroom to regurgitate.  After I got cleaned up and cooled down for awhile, we went back out to watch more of the performances.



After the flute player played this piece, she switched to alto flute to play "Summertime."  Unfortunately, my cam ran out of memory before the piece was over.



Since I was still feeling a little ill, we just watched a couple more songs then walked around a bit.  I tried to go to a cooling station, but the damn thing was off.  I ended up going to the fountain to get a little moist to try to feel better.  Unfortunately, that didn't help much, so we went up and looked in the air conditioned shops.  Still feeling ill, we decided to go.

Once we got out of the parking garage, we remembered that we hadn't eaten as we had planned and stopped by a McDonald's to grab something to eat for the long drive home.  I got a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and she got a Happy Meal.  A Happy Meal?  Ok.  As long as it made her happy.

After the two hour drive home, I was pretty sore, so I had her rub some Blue Emu on my back.  Once that started working, we were up until sometime after 7am when the sun started shining.  All in all, it was a pretty successful date.  Eventually,  I'll get my body built back up so that I can better endure the heat and driving distances and we'll head out on other adventures.