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.

A New Year

A new year dawns and we hope it will be a good one for all. One of our projects in the motorhome while we were here was to recover the dining room chairs. We finished that project before we moved over to this side of the lake and we are happy with the results. Old chair on the right and a finished chair on the left.

Ever since we started telling people that we were headed to Waco, TX, we we told about this being the home of Chip and Joanna Gaines of the show "Fixer Upper". Here are pictures of their house frome where we drove past it one day.

Christmas has come and gone again. We put up a tree by the motorhome and it was a beacon of light guiding us home after dark.

We were invited over to another volunteers rv for lunch on Christmas Eve and we enjoyed that. We went to Mass on Christmas morning and had lunch at a Chinese Buffet. The rest of the day was spent quietly at home. 

On one of our drives around the area we came upon a sign that said "Caution, narrow bridge, watch for high water. On the other side of the hill was this. Not really what I would call a bridge.

On another one of our drives, we spotted this interesting house here in town. The story of it is on the sign in the next picture.

One night, just after it began to get dark, we spotted this guy in front of the motorhome.

An interesting tree chewed off by the beavers here. It is nearly chewed through near the bottom, but also chewed off about eight feet further up the tree. Maybe the higher one was done during the flood when the water was  higher?

Armadillo sightings are also common here. This guy was in one of the campgrounds.

We went to Mass last night and went into town for lunch with another volunteer couple here today for New Years Day lunch. We enjoyed the day and are looking forward to the new year.

Moved Across the Lake

Some pictures from Midway RV Park where we were parked.

Sunset over the lake from Midway.

This is the bridge across the lake from Midway to Twin Bridges. We are on the other end of it now.

On Monday, we moved to our new site across the lake. We are in the Twin Bridges Recreation Area now. There are two RV sites here by the entrance gate. We are in one of them.

The shed that is visible behind the motor home in the first picture is for us to use for storage. We thought it would be a great place to store the bikes, so I started to sweep it out. I found out that it was full of wasps. Mom and I attacked them with wasp spray and got rid of them.

Work has continued as before here, mornings Mon-Fri. Along with our new site here on the other side of the lake we also have some gate unlocking and locking duties. The local TV station came out the other day and did a story on the flood cleanup. This is a picture from their site. You might recognize the guy in the brown shirt.

In my last post I mentioned that we were recovering the dining room chairs. We finished that job and we are happy with the results. Here is a before and after picture.

The church here where we attend Mass has a very interesting alter. Angel statues hold up the alter and the tabernacle.

 This isn't a very good picture of it, but we drove around and found Chip and Joanna Gaines's house.

 It rained here all day yesterday and the day before, but it looks like we will have a few dry days now. We are going to try to do some Christmas decorating here at our RV site and move a few things into the shed.