February in Waco

Wow, over a month has passed since my last post! Time has gone by fast here. The temperature has been all over the place, highs from 40s to 70s, lows from mid 20s to in the 50s. Not as warm as we have been used to lately where we have spent the winter. We have enjoyed our days here in Waco. The city has many things going for it. We have been visiting some of the attractions here during the last month. First we went to the Texas Ranger Museum and Hall of Fame. It did a very good job of displaying the history of the Texas Rangers and included a long video in their theater. A lot of nice displays of their guns and other equipment. One of the interesting things that I learned was that many of the early ones were also surveyors which helped them settle land disputes.

We also went to the traveling exhibition of the Titanic artifacts at Baylor University here. Amazing objects that survived that long and a lot of the personal stories that went along with them. Your ticket had the name of one of the passengers on it and at the end of the tour you could see if they survived or not. The only place where photography was allowed was here at the entry.

Early in January one of our grandsons was on vacation near here with a friend and stopped in one day for a visit. We went out for supper and they headed back home up north. Sure was nice to have him visit.

One day as we returned to the park after some errands, as we were getting out of the Jeep, a hawk flew past and landed in a tree next to the motorhome. As I tried to take it's picture, I noticed that it had some leather bands on its legs. I thought that it might be someones hunting bird. It then landed on the rack on the Jeep and back to the tree again. As we were watching it, another on joined it in the tree. A lady drove up and stopped her car. She was a birder and had a camera with a long lens. As she was calling a friend who knew something about hunting birds, a pickup with a man and his son drove in. They had a radio tracker and were looking for the birds. They belonged to another lady and they had been hunting rabbits on the other side of the road before they took off. He called the lady and she came over to retrieve them.

They explained that the birds were Harris Hawks. The man in the pickup also showed us his peregrine falcon that he used to hunt ducks. This was all very new and interesting to me. 

We had a nice day here Monday, so we went to the Waco Zoo and spent most of the day. Janice thought that some of the grandkids might like this snake.

 Where the Brazos river runs through Waco there is an old suspension bridge. The early cattle drives on the Chisholm Trail used to ford the river near there. Eventually the bridge was built and people would pay a toll to cross it or bring cattle across it. The bridge still stands and is used for pedestrians now.

In the park by this bridge they have erected a herd of sculptures representing the cattle and horsemen who used to cross here. A total of 25 cows and three horsemen.

Yesterday we visited the Waco Mammoth National Monument. They have recovered several skeletons of a group of Columbian mamouths there and have built a large building over the site.

We had a very interesting and knowledgeable tour guide and enjoyed our visit.

Today we went to the Dr. Pepper Museum here where Dr Pepper was invented and originally bottled. It was special since Dr. Pepper is Janice's favorite. We spent quite a bit of time there.

We left the Dr. Pepper Museum and went over to the Silos. This is a downtown area owned by Chip and Johanna Gaines who are famous for their TV show 'Fixer Upper'. We didn't see them of course, but we went through their overpriced store and grabbed some sandwiches from a food truck outside selling food from their restaurant.

Thats all for now, it's bedtime.