Texas Part 2

Our second adventure of the Texas trip took us to Waco. We went to see the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame, the surveyor shown in the picture below is in front of the Hall. It was pretty cool, lots of information about how the Rangers developed over time. There was one odd thing, there were guns all over the place in the displays, but I did not see one bullet or even a shell anywhere.



We also saw the suspension bridge, which was the longest single span of its kind west of the Mississippi when it was built in 1870. Why no pictures? Because it is hard to take a picture when you are driving the Wrong Way on a One Way bridge that runs parallel to the historic bridge. It is also hard to get a picture when you are making haste to get out of a place before the local authorities notice what you did. The few locals we saw just shook their heads and laughed. Glad it wasn't busy!

Back to the food subject. The Wurstmarkt in Harker Heights, Texas is worth the trip if you are in the area. They have excellant Jaegerschnitzel, Kroketten, and a wonderful cold salat with red cabbage, sauerkraut, and cucumbers in dill sauce.


I tend to take some odd pictures at times. This could be one of them. It is a picture of some city, somewhere in the USA from the left side of the plane between Houston and Charleston. It was a very clear night. I watched cities go by for a long time.



Overall it was a good trip. We learned a lot about the program that we will be teaching and got to know each other enough so that we can work together. Next trip is Louisiana in January.

Texas

Well, the traveling has begun. I made it to Texas this week and am learning a lot about this program that I will be training people how to use. I don't know how long the traveling will last or where it will take me yet, but I do know that there are a lot of locations on the list, the people I am working with are a fun bunch, and I am doing what I can to be an excellant instructor.

This is an interesting part of Texas that we are in... I am sure it must be. I haven't found the interesting parts yet, it is pretty flat and dry looking, but I will keep looking. Saturday we drove a few hours south to San Antonio and played tourist at the Alamo. Here is the front of the old fortress. Overall there isn't much to look at, but the history is a nice read and looking at the structure is pretty cool. We also went to the Imax theater and watched a show about it. Same scenes from any movie you may have seen elsewhere, but Really Big.



We also did the river walk in San Antonio. It is beautiful and busy with food and shopping opportunities, if you haven't been, you should go sometime. This is a picture I took along the way. The cyclamens were pretty and then the river background made it a very nice picture.



I didn't get a picture of the Coyote Ugly bar that the guys wanted to check out. It lived up to the reputation. I was the DD (and will be on every trip so that I always have a rental car available), which got me free Pepsi's and the guys had a good look and were appropriately embarrassed. HA

These trips will have an unfortunate focus on food. I am alwasy interested in finding a good place to eat and so are the guys. This is a picture of Rudy's Bar B Q. It is located at exit 254 off of I35.



Absolutely delicious brisket and ribs! The cole slaw and creamed corn were good too. The place was packed with people, mostly locals it seemed coming in to get To Go bags. It was really fun too, your food is served on butcher paper in a plastic soda bottle carrier. I should have taken more pictures, it was fun and very tasty. I saw another Rudy's on down the road by San Antonio, so I hope to find the chain again someday.

I might find more things to take pictures of before I get out of here, so consider this part one. We leave next Friday, just in time for Christmas, I have a direct flight so no stops in Chicago or anything. I am so lucky that Billy is willing to take care of the house, of course I cleaned as much as I could before I left, but I only had a few days notice!
Have a nice week every one!

Farm Gourd

Sorry about the long delay in posting. I had been waiting for my new camera and then it was dark everyday when I got home. The sun finally came out so now we have pictures.


Here are the last two gourds I have painted. I used some more DD lessons to do the sunflowers and got freehanded with the farm scene. Folk art, my style. I have another one that I used stain on, but I haven't done anything else with it, so that one will have to wait.

The new camera is pretty cool. It is a Konica Minolta D1mage Z3. Here are some examples of the wild zoom. I can get right on top of stuff. The picture on the left is from the front porch looking toward the birdfeeder that you see in the next picture. A little fuzzy because I wobbled, but what a zoom. That first picture also shows a woodpile on the right hand side by the fence. The last picture is from the other end of the porch and shows a bird sitting on that wood pile. I just think it is fun.


The last couple of pictures are of my holiday decorations, before the tree gets put up in the house. The crazy tomato of summer have been recreated as a Christmas tree in the yard. Ok, crazy, but you have to see it (in person) from the driveway, it looks good, really. grin



Besides that, I have new job news. I happened to be in the right place one day and ended up with an opportunity to teach the Army how to use a program they bought. We will see how that goes, I expect good things. I am off to Texas to learn how to teach it this week. Future postings will very likely include pictures from my adventures. Billy and I are in Charleston tonight, I needed a ride to the airport in the morning and he needed an excuse to go to Olive Garden. We both won on that one. Well, I better get off of here, getting kind of long winded.