The cat was actually quiet all night so we were able to sleep until past 7:00 this morning. We got ready and decided to go to the zoo today. I wanted to go to the zoo in Houston but then I read that the San Antonio Zoo was one of the country’s top zoos, so we planned to go while we were here. It really was a very nice zoo. I took a bunch of pictures. We started in the reptile house [lots of snakes, but I won't put any of those up here :)]

Then we continued to walk around to see the monkeys. One monkey even squeezed out of the netting and was swinging around outside of his cage (last picture)

The africa exhibit is huge, and under construction to make it even bigger

There were some bears

This zoo has tons of birds

There was a very small aquarium

And since we missed the butterflies at the Natural Science Museum, I paid an extra dollar to see the butterflies

Then there were some other animals

After the zoo, we stopped at a HEB grocery store on our way back to the campground. We didn’t need anything but it looked like a brand new store, so we decided to stop and take a look. We had leftover pizza for dinner, then watched a little of the election coverage and a few shows I had recorded. It was an early night as we were both tired.

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We got up early and headed North towards Waco today. It is the opposite direction we will go when we leave here, and there were a few things we wanted to see before we left Texas. Our first stop was College Station–the home of Texas A&M University. The George Bush Library is located here, adjacent to the College. We took our time and looked at all of the exhibits, including family photos, Barbara’s wedding dress, the elections, the gulf war, and beyond. They also had a temporary exhibit area that displayed the space program. When Judy and Kathy were here, it was a baseball hall of fame exhibit, which they both said was their favorite part of their visit…

There was a mock-up of the oval office as well, but that was where the museum took souvenir photos for visitors, and personal photography was not allowed.

Then we continued on to Waco. The main thing I wanted to see there was the Dr Pepper museum. It was interesting, but the actual Dr Pepper museum was kind of small, especially for the $6 entry fee. They also had displays of other soft drink brands, and how Dr Pepper fit in. I guess the best part of it was that the museum was in the actual building where the company started–there is an artesian well in the building that supplied the water, and the original uneven wood floor on the second level. Plus a gift shop

After Dr pepper, we went to lunch. We were near the university, so there were lots of fast food options. We went to Fazoli’s, a fast food Italian place. I had heard of it before somewhere, but we had never been there. I got the Tuesday special which was noodles with half meat sauce and half cream sauce with a slice of pizza and a breadstick for $2.99. Kevin got the same, but just meat sauce. It was not the best Italian food ever, but it was good for the price, and I would eat there again.

Our last stop of the day was the Texas Rangers museum. There was a 45 minute video that we could have waited to see to give more history and facts, but we didn’t want to wait for it to start, then watch a video that long. So we just started on the exhibits. There were lots of guns, then there were more guns, and then some more guns. There were also exhibits on The Lone Ranger, Texas rangers in film and television, and the history of law enforcement, up to present day.

Right across the parking lot from the museum was an old cemetery. It looked interesting from the road, so when we were done in the museum, we walked over there to take a look around. Some of the grave stones were very old, dating from the late 1800’s, but many of them were in disrepair. There was also a section that looked like it was better taken care of, but it was not nearly as interesting as the old area.

After wandering around for a short time–the sun was beating down on us and we had no hats–we headed home. It is about 140 miles one way, so it was a long day and we were tired when we got home. I had planned on stopping at the grocery store to get a few things on the way home, but we decided we will go tomorrow instead…

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Tuesday we were off, so we went into town. We stopped in Cypress and had lunch at CiCi’s pizza buffet, then we drove into Houston to go to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. On Tuesdays, the museum is free after 2:00 pm. And with free parking on the street, it didn’t cost us anything. We went and looked at all of the exhibits, including dinosaurs and fossils, rocks and minerals, and African wildlife.

We also saw an energy exhibit.

The third floor was the hall of the Americas with artifacts from native American tribes ranging from Alaska to Peru. Photography was prohibited there, but we saw blankets, costumes, dolls, and various other items. The seal-gut water proof coat was pretty cool.

I had wanted to see the butterflies exhibit, but it was a separate ticket purchase and the ticket had to be purchased by 4:00, since that part of the museum closed at 5:00. I missed it by about ten minutes. Since we missed that, we spent a while looking around the gift shops. They had a lot of over priced “gifts” relating to the exhibits, but they didn’t even have a decent postcard, so we didn’t buy anything.

When we were finished inside, we went outside and walked around the Sam Houston Statue and the sun dial waterfall at the front of the museum. The black globe is a 5,000 pound ball of granite that spins on a fountain of water. That was kind of cool.

It was getting late, so we made a quick stop at Jack in the Box for drinks, then went back to Cypress to get groceries at HEB. It was dark by the time we got home, so I read for awhile and Kevin worked on the computer. We are off Wednesday and Thursday too, but we don’t have any plans to do anything…yet.

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We went to the Houston Space Center on Thursday. It is about 75 miles from Jellystone Park on the Southwestern side of Houston. We went on the tram tour first while it was still cooler outside. It is about a ninety minute tour through both historical and working parts of the space center. First we went to the original mission control room.

Then we got back on the tram and went to the training facility where they use full-sized mockups of the space station for training.

The last stop on the tram tour was “rocket park” where we saw the Saturn V close up.

After the tram tour, we went and saw a blast-off film and a mission control demonstration, as well as a film on the space station (the film was a bit dated, but the theater itself was cool{freezing, actually, but anyway}). Then we went and saw the displays in the starship gallery.

We even got to touch an actual moon rock!!

We went to dinner at the Golden Corral Buffet. We went there when we were in Yuma and we liked the food then, so we decided to try it again. It was very similar, but the selections were more “Southern” than in Yuma. By the time we got home, we were both tired, so we watched a bit if TV, then went to bed early.

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I spent the weekend at the Oregon coast with my grandmother. She has a little cabin in Lincoln City. It is difficult for her to make the two hour trip by herself, plus she really doesn’t like to stay down there alone, so I made a point to take her down while I was here in Oregon. We didn’t have very nice weather, but we did make it down to the beach twice. The main reason we chose this weekend was for garage sales. It was the Lincoln City annual city-wide garage sale–there were more than 100 sales, but we probably only hit around 30. We bought a lot of books and just a few other things. I have not spent all that much time with my grandmother in the last few years, so it was fun to spend a few days with her.

While I was gone, Kevin worked on getting a Tow Defender attached to the coach. That will keep rocks and things from chipping the paint and the windows of the CR-V while it is being towed. The one he picked is made to work with our tow bar, but our RV tailpipe stuck out too far to use it, so he also had to replace the tail pipe on the RV. His other big project was reorganizing all of our outside storage areas. He got his tools organized into plastic bins, and got rid of the stuff we do not need. He also worked on mapping our trip to Texas–quite a long, expensive drive, but we will go through several states neither of us have seen, plus we will be able to spend a few days with my Mom in Yuma, Arizona. Should be an interesting trip…

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A picture of Lake Washington from the park on the bike trail.

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Today we made a trip back to Wenatchee to get mail and check on our house, so we made a quick stop at Deception Falls. It is a small roadside picnic/rest area(with outhouses–yuck!!) just off highway 2, about halfway between Skykomish and Stevens Pass Ski Area. We have driven that road many times, but have never stopped there before. The highway actually goes over the falls, so it is a very short walk down the path to see it. There are other trails leading down to the river and beyond, but we did not take any of those–we weren’t really dressed for a hike. We got to use my new camera to take the pictures:) You can click the above picture to go to the photo gallery to see the rest of the pictures we took.

We then continued on to Wenatchee to check the house–we pulled some weeds, reset the sprinkler system, and picked up a few things we thought we might need. We picked up a bunch of mail Kevin’s Mom has been collecting for us, had some lunch at Applebee’s, made a quick stop at JCPenny’s, then headed home. Normally the trip takes about 2 1/2 hours, but since it was a Sunday evening in July, it took us a whole hour longer. The traffic was stop-and-go for MILES. I guess we will know better next time…

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