A Year About

Houston is fun. It’s fun because of who we are with, of course. The Embree family has entertained us in high style. Yesterday Mark came to visit us at the campground with two of their kids, Cora and Owen. When they first arrived, it was rainy and windy so we hung out inside for a while. Elise and Cora are the same age and after some initial shyness, they became fast friends and played Polly Pockets. Owen is five, so he appropriately bothered the girls until we hit critical mass and needed to leave the trailer. By this time, the wind had cleared the clouds away and we hustled over to the nature center. There we touched the requisite baby alligator and corn snake, listened to story time about white-tailed deer and checked out all the animal cages. We found out that the alligators cannibalize each other, so keep your pet alligators away from each other.

In the afternoon, we headed to downtown Houston. Mark teaches at Rice University in the Computational and Applied Mathematics Department, so we got a quick tour of the campus. We saw his office and lab.


A special prize to you if you can tell us anything about the math on this board!


Lovett Hall at Rice.

The kids were thrilled to play on the granite sculptures in the engineering quad. There are three huge slabs of granite representing the three fundamental angles of engineering: 45 degrees, 90 degrees and 180 degrees. These are also known as Tipsy, Sober and Drunk. Elise and Cora climbed on top of Drunk and danced all around.


A pre-cursor of the years to come?!

After Rice, we were treated to a trip to Central Market. This is an incredibly souped up grocery store — imagine Whole Foods but bigger, more varied and angrier. Everyone there is grumpy, with absolutely no room for human kindness. You pausing momentarily in the aisle prevents the Important Someone behind you from getting their organic sun-dried apricot free range granola patty. We sampled all the yummies available and escaped, lightening our wallet only slightly.

The evening was spent at Mark and Kristine’s house where we got to meet Becket, the newest member of their family. Elise is always thrilled with little ones and Becket was no exception. Elise, Cora and Owen played for hours until it was time to go. The drive home took us about 45 minutes and we were all soon asleep in the warmth of our trailer, as the tent campers next to us hunkered down in the very windy 35 degree weather.

This morning Elise woke Bobby up with a very cheerful, “Happy Birthday, Daddy! I’m so tired I could barely get that out, but I did it!” We had a birthday breakfast of Matte Latte tea, hot chocolate and fresh bread. We got cleaned up and headed back to Mark and Kristine’s for 11:00 Mass at their parish. A delicious brunch followed at their house and we have spent the afternoon talking with Mark and Kristine while the kids played. This is the way Sundays should be and we’re grateful we could spend this time with friends.

Another rainy day. I’m surprised the people of Austin aren’t schizophrenic with all these weather changes.

We are hitched up and heading to Houston to visit Mark Embree, a friend of Bobby’s. Rumor has it he and his wife have a little girl for Elise to play with. Hooray! We’ll be staying at a state park again with no wifi, so we’ll try to take advantage of Mark and Christine’s hospitality and borrow theirs to keep you updated.

Say a prayer for my cousin Laura’s daughter, Alex, today. She finds out at 5:00 sharp if she got into Stanford. Everyone is on pins and needles!

Elise helps carry feed for the pigs at the Sauer-Beckmann Farmstead near LBJ’s ranch.

There is no other way to explain it. The Texas sky is just bigger. We drove through Texas Hill Country under cottonball clouds that themselves slid under a deep blue sky. The grasses were all browns and tans, standing in contrast to the dark greys and greens of the live oaks and juniper. Virginia skies are never this big and I can’t explain exactly why.


The view from the front porch of Johnson’s birthplace.

You don’t need to know why to enjoy them though. We drove an hour and a half to the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Park. It’s LBJ’s ranch. We didn’t have high expectations, but we were pleasantly surprised. It’s lovely. The ancient live oaks are incredible. The Texas White House is a fine rambling old farmhouse (visitors aren’t allowed inside yet, though). The ranch is home to antelope, bison, deer, Hereford cattle, and longhorns. The president and his family are buried in a modest little cemetery a stone’s throw from his birthplace.


Sheep at the Sauer-Beckmann Farmstead.

One of the neatest features of the park is the Sauer-Beckmann Farmstead, which is presented and worked as it would have been around 1918. This means no electricity, no running water, and — stunningly enough — no television or PSPs. The rangers and volunteers wear period dress and do all of the chores required, including: milking the cows, gathering the chicken eggs, feeding all the animals, and tending the garden. They also make cheese, pork sausage, canned vegetables, and even slaughter the cows and pigs as necessary. Nothing is wasted and everything is done by hand and with the tools of the time.



Elise helped gather eggs, feed the pigs and a cow, and herd the chickens back in their coop for the evening. She loved it and decided she wanted this job when she was grown up! Danine and I liked it too. We could see it was hard work, but also wholesome work. We both thought it would be cool to live on a farm and rely on the careful management of the resources it provides. Then we realized we have no knowledge or skills to sustain such a place. If only there were a farming starter kit we could get and someone to spend a year teaching us the ropes.


Just what the signs says. And only a few blocks from our trailer!

We drove home, ate the corned beef that had been cooking in the crock pot, and headed out again. This time we simply walked over to Zilker Park, to the Trail of Lights. It’s an annual holiday event in which a large section of the park is used for some impressive Christmas light displays. Various companies and organizations sponsor displays. Some were great and others not. Dell Computer’s display had a freaky robotic-space Santa and other cheesy sci-fi stuff. Some were unintentionally spooky. There was a Candyland themed display that was playing this eerie song about candy and had huge diabolical popsicles staring down at you. Creepy, man, creepy.


Elise and Cartman, a very incongruous pair.


Elise was not as creeped out by Candyland as I was.

The highlight of the night was the mini train ride through the park. As we passed the crowds walking to and from the Trail of Lights, many people — kids and adults alike — waved happily and called out friendly greetings.

Now we’re home and tuckered out. Tomorrow we leave for Brazos Bend State Park, just outside of Houston.

Our nephew Conor gave Bobby a book last Christmas called Roadfood. It is “the coast-to-coast guide to 600 of the best barbecue joints, lobster shacks, ice cream parlors, highway diners and much, much more” as proclaimed on the cover. We have been trying to use it since we hit the road, but for one reason or another we have met with failure every time. In Savannah, the recommended restaurant wasn’t open on the weekends. In Orlando, the restaurant was only open for lunch and we didn’t get into town until evening. Imagine our glee when we realized tonight that one of the Roadfood restaurants was five blocks from where we spent the afternoon. Bobby’s cousin Matthew had also recommended it, so off we went to Hut’s Hamburgers. Getting there at 5:45 turned out to be smart, although it wasn’t on purpose. By the time we left, it was packed and there were four to five groups waiting to be seated.

Hut’s, opened in 1939, is the quintessential burger joint. From the neon signs outside to the cherry Coke made with syrup to the very dusty pennants of various college and professional sports teams hanging on the walls, the place is laden with nostalgia. Tonight was buy one burger get one free night, but it had to be the same burger. Bobby and I agreed on the Mr. Blue, with bleu cheese crumbles and dressing, swiss cheese, lettuce and bacon. It was a fine burger. Elise had a plain burger and a root beer float. Actually, she had 4 bites of the burger and mostly the root beer float. We all left full and happy.

Earlier in the day, Elise and I completed our final cliency (a Miller family term for a secret mission) for Bobby’s birthday. I’d tell you what we did, but Bobby reads the blog too, so you’ll just have to wait until after his birthday (Sunday). When we got back to Bobby and the trailer, we moved sites to make room for a 40′ monster that was coming into the RV park tonight. Once re-situated, we ate soup and quesadillas for lunch. Afterward we headed downtown to the Children’s Museum.


Elise works on her invention.

This was another idea of my cousin Shannon’s and a hit with Elise. We spent the afternoon there, cooking in the diner, digging up dinosaur bones, dropping pigs in parachutes, creating contraptions with peg boards, screws, nuts and bolts, and building “houses” out of tiny pieces of rubber. All in all, it was a very satisfactory afternoon.


Danine finally gets her moment in the spotlight!


Bobby, aka Lazy Construction Worker Bill, works on his road.

After a dreary day of spitting rain and temperatures in the 40s, tomorrow is supposed to be clear and 62. I think we’re going to head to Lyndon B. Johnson’s ranch and see what there is to see.

Life for the unemployed gypsies goes on. We are still trying to finish our Christmas shopping, so we did a little more of that. We also walked to nearby Zilker Park and goofed around. Actually Elise and another girl goofed around while Danine and I cracked and ate pecans. This from Elise: “We had gravel babies, which means we tucked our shirts in and then poured in rocks (small pebbles). Then we untucked our shirts and they poured out. There’s a million babies!”





We walked along Barton Springs, which has been built up into a huge pool complete with lifeguards and actual swimmers! The temperature went up to eighty yesterday and then last night it rained and dropped back to fifty-ish.



We ended our day by meeting Gunny for dinner at Hill’s Cafe. We met Gunny at Roger Williams Airstream in Weatherford, TX. He is an Austin native and it was fun to chat with him about his experiences. He’s just come back to the area after nine months of traveling in his Airstream. We all had the famous chicken fried steak and it hit the proverbial spot. Elise stopped eating her average grilled cheese and had some too!



Because we extended our stay for two days, we have to move to a new spot (ours was already taken). It’s a bit of a pain to hitch up and move 100 ft., but we’ll be settled in after 30 minutes or so. Hopefully we’ll explore the Children’s Museum and other downtown stuff this afternoon.

Yesterday morning in Lake Mineral Wells SP it was 30 degrees. That is unacceptable. Someone should say something to somebody about that. Write a letter. As we drove toward Austin, the temperature rose to 65 degrees. Then dropped back into the 40s by nightfall. Huh? Who’s controlling Texas weather? Isn’t there a satellite or computer or university think tank that can regulate all of this? Let’s get some consistency around here (preferrably 70 degrees plus or minus 2 degrees). Sheesh.

We are safely in an old, quirky (Elise would say rusty) campground called Pecan Grove near the middle of Austin. It has charm, friendly people, and is close to everything. Since our arrival, Elise has been cracking and eating the pecans she finds lying about. We’ll be here until Friday. We had planned to leave earlier, heading for Brazos Bend State Park, which is just south of Houston. However, Brazos Bend is having a controlled deer hunt right now and won’t be open for campers till Friday. I for one am glad not to be there during the deer hunt. “Jim! Shoot that balding deer over there by the big silver rock!”

Last night we went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (type that into your Blackberry three times fast). They were having an event called Luminations. The paths and patios were lined with luminaries (bags with lights) giving everthing a warm glow. A rotation of local musicians and musical groups played and sang holiday tunes — we particularly like the Austin Banjo Club, consisting of roughly twelve banjoes and a tuba. Frosty the Snowman mingled with the crowd. He gave Elise a hug, six high fives, and fought her in a thumb war. He was surprisingly svelte. Inside they had an excellent kids craft area set up. You could decorate a gourd, cut out snowflakes, and write and decorate a letter to Santa. Elise finally got that letter off! Luckily (for Santa) she writes big and could only fit three things on her list. Danine’s cousin Shannon is to thank for tipping us off about Luminations. She sent us several ideas for things to do. Thanks, Shannon!

I was hoping you wouldn’t notice, but maybe you did: we forgot to take our camera last night. Sorry! Today we did laundry, Elise did some school, and I drove around looking for propane. Didn’t bring the camera for those events either.

Oh, one last thing. We have been listening to a few of the Lemony Snicket books on CD while driving. They are an ingenious formula and very amusing. It’s a long parade of terrible things happening to three charming children. The books are dour, occasionally morbid, and, as read by Tim Curry, very funny.

It’s time to go to Austin. We were up at 8:00 this morning and began to get ready. We want to leave by 10:00 so that we can get to Austin around 2:00. We haven’t made it to Mass yet and we’re hoping we can find an evening Mass in town.

Bobby went out to get the truck ready to hitch up and discovered that it was only 31 degrees outside! Needless to say, by the time everything was ready to go, Bobby had lost feeling in his hands. We made it on the road by 10:00 and since Bobby has been driving for about an hour now, I can only assume that feeling has returned to his fingers.

Danine and Elise with Cowboy Dave and Cowboy Tim.

Part of Lake Mineral Wells is a 20-mile trailway that connects Weatherford to Mineral Wells. It is an old railroad bed that has been converted to a crushed limestone path for horses, bikes and walkers. Since we are leaving tomorrow and hadn’t had a chance to ride on it we decided that today was the day. Remember yesterday’s blog when I told you that the weather here is quirky? This morning was definitely cooler, some might say down right chilly. We dressed warmly and rode our bikes in 50 degree weather. I wouldn’t call it a long ride, but we enjoyed the scenery and ended up playing a game that involved our bikes being horses and us being cowboys and cowgirls. Ask Elise about Roondy Roughhand sometime.

After the ride we headed down to Penitentiary Hollow, an area of the park a lot like Great Falls in Virginia, minus the falls. It’s a great spot for rock climbing and there were many groups out there, mainly young adults climbing sheer cliff faces with abandon. Elise was thrilled. She loves, loves, loves to scramble on rocks. This became the highlight of the day. For the next hour, we climbed the highest and hardest boulders/rocks/cliffs/instruments of death we could manage.

The afternoon passed pleasantly enough with a little fishing, showers for all of us and an hour or so of school. We ate an early dinner and then got ready for a Cowboy Christmas being held at the Lone Star Ampitheater elsewhere in the park. Fortified with hot chocolate, coffee and sugar cookies, we enjoyed a wonderful evening of cowboy Christmas songs and cowboy poetry.



The cowboy poet was really an interpretive ranger from the park and the singing cowboy was a very talented man named Tim Graham.


Cowboy Dave reciting poetry.


Tim Graham leads us in a rousing rendition of “Randolph, the Bow-legged Cowboy”.

Apparently he is well known in the cowboy music industry and was on CMT (Country Music Television) a few years ago in a Christmas special. Santa made an appearance at the end of the evening and the children lined up to let him know what they most desired. The best one of the night was the 8-year old boy who wanted a sniper rifle. Yikes. Other kids wanted a pocketknife and various electronic game systems. Elise? She just wants a book on CD.

The court house in Granbury, Texas

Have you ever touched anything over 110 million years old? Besides your laundry, I mean? We did . . .

Today’s weather was incredibly different from yesterday’s. Walking around Ft. Worth yesterday, we were in long sleeves and jeans. Today, when I walked out of the Airstream I could tell it was going to be a shorts and T-shirt kind of day. I think it’s supposed to be rainy and cold this weekend. Texas in the winter is quirky that way.



Around 10:00, we finally got it together enough to head out. Heading to a destination 40 miles away, our GPS told us it would take us an hour and a half. Things really do slow down here in Texas! On our way, we passed through the very cute little town of Granbury. Another recommendation of my cousin Laura, we stopped to have a look. The court house was beautiful. As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, all county seats in Texas have these elaborate court houses. They are the tallest buildings for miles in every direction. It doesn’t matter what direction you approach them from, they are just stunning. Around this particular court house was a shopping square filled with cute boutiques, law offices and eateries. We window shopped, then settled on the Nutt House for lunch. The Nutt brothers were the founders of Granbury. Lunch was delicious. I had an Autumn Salad with pears, candied pecans, bleu cheese and a cinnamon vinaigrette. Bobby had a mesquite grilled French Dip sandwich and Elise said she had the yummiest grilled cheese sandwich next to mine, of course. I actually thought this one was better, but I’ll take the compliment! Happily for us we discovered that we could get wifi in the restaurant. We’re discovering that it’s tough to find a free wireless internet connection in the more rural areas we’re visiting. We’re striking out in libraries again like we did in Mississippi.

Quick aside: I am slowly realizing how lucky we are to live in Northern Virginia. I was in a library this week and wanted to find a book on CD from a series that we have been listening to with Elise. It’s a kid’s book series so I asked the children’s librarian where the books on CD were. With no inflection in her voice and a look that told me I was slightly crazed for asking, she told me, “I don’t have any CDs.” I have to admit that I was really surprised by this. No books on CD at all? Not in the children’s section. There was a small rack of adult books on CD, but only about 30. I guess we’ll wait until we get to Austin and try again.

OK – back to our day. After Granbury, we headed to our main destination of the day, Dinosaur Valley SP in Glen Rose. Layered rocks in the park belong to the Glen Rose formation, deposited about 113 million years ago as Cretaceous seas began to advance and retreat across central and north-central Texas. Occasionally severe storms would drive the plant eating dinosaurs out of the marshes and forests to the tidal flats. There, they left deep tracks in the soft mud. These filled with sediments washed from bordering lagoons and, upon hardening into rock, the ancient footprints became the preserved molds you can see today when you visit. There are two places where you can see them well but you have to work for it a little bit.



The first is on the far side of the river. The footprints are in the streambed of the Paluxy River, a tributary of the Brazos River. The park doesn’t do a great job explaining where the footprints are, but we could see yellow tape around something across the river. There seemed to be two paths you could take across the water. On both, many of the rocks were submerged by the rushing water. Since it was 80 degrees outside, we just took our shoes and socks off, Bobby and Elise rolled up their pants (I was wearing shorts, remember?) and off we went across the rocks. The water was COLD and fast-running. We crossed easily and there they were: 110 million-year-old dinosaur footprints (give or take). The footprints are submerged in water, which I thought was strange. I thought the water would erode the prints, but I learned, by remaining submerged they are better preserved. It’s the wind that erodes them. There are two kinds of prints here: sauropod, a large herbivore like a brontosaurus, and a theropod, a bipedal carnivore. Apparently from the location of their tracks paleontologists believe that the theropod was chasing the sauropod, looking for dinner. The theropod could run about 5 miles an hour, the sauropod an unfortunate 2.7 miles an hour.


The therapod’s footprint.

After crossing the river a few more times for fun, we ventured over to another track site, which required us to scramble down a rocky hill. Bobby and Elise brought their sketch books and spent a cozy 20 minutes drawing the prints.



These prints were not roped off. They were on the edge of a swimming hole that is used with some frequency — if the life saving jugs are any indication.



After they finished sketching, we all reached into the water and touched a theropod footprint. Tonight we were talking about how cool it was and what struck Elise was that God had to be at least 110 million years old, since He was around before the dinosaurs. I love how young minds work!







The state park where we are staying is helping us get into the Christmas spirit. They converted one of their campgrounds that is closed for winter into a Christmas lights display. For the price of a canned food donation, you can drive through the park and see the lights. In the beginning, we let Elise sit in the front seat with us. Then we saw some kids in the back of a pick-up truck and that was all the incentive Elise needed. We actually went through the lights display twice so she could enjoy being in the back.


A true Texas Christmas, complete with a rifle over the fireplace!



It was all fun and games until the ranger pulled us over for having a child under 18 in the back of a pick-up. This was after we had left the lights area and were heading back to our site. The ranger was very polite about it, but Elise was embarrassed and a little scared. Nothing like having a strange man flash his police lights at you and then walk toward you with a flashlight in his hand! Ice cream and a few hands of Mama Jen’s rummy helped pull her through.

As we left Dallas, my cousin Laura told us that we had to eat at Joe T.’s when we were in Ft. Worth. Dutifully we went today and our bellies are grateful we did. Joe T. Garcia’s started in 1935 with 16 seats. Today there are over 1,000 and it seems to take up an entire city block. Laura told us to order the “dinner” which consists of 2 cheese nachos, 2 cheese enchiladas, 2 beef tacos, refried beans, rice, guacamole and corn tortillas. All for $7.95. Not bad.



Since we were from out of town, we asked the waitress for a recommendation for somewhere to walk around. She directed us to the Fort Worth Stockyards a few blocks away. They are a shadow of what they used to be, but still fun to wander through. The lady at the Visitor’s Center showed us an aerial map of the original stockyards and it is hard to imagine that many cattle in one place at one time. Cattle used to roam freely in Texas and no one paid them much attention. After the Civil War, the cows were herded and shipped north to meet the new beef demand. Cattle were soon penned up and raised for their meat. We saw some of these beasts today and let me tell you, I would not want to herd them, myself. There was a pen of longhorn steers and these animals are huge! Their horns are incredibly long (hence, the name “longhorn”, I know). For more history of the stockyards, click here.





We toured the cowboy museum and went inside the Cowtown Coliseum. There is a rodeo there every Friday and Saturday night. We toyed with the idea of going while we are still here, but once I saw that the Cowboy Chicks were going to be there for entertainment, I decided we’d pass. You’d have to see the poster of them to understand where I’m coming from, but take my word for it.



At 4:00, we stood on the street and watched the cattle drive. Basically, the 15 longhorn steers that we saw in the pen earlier in the day, were led down the street in an “authentic” cattle drive for about two blocks. The trail boss led the way shouting, “Follow”, two cowboys (one of whom was a cowgirl) were on the side as Flanks and the guy in the back was the Drag. He did have to harass one of the steer who was trying to eat the leaves in the street. It was definitely a tourist bit, but fun to watch. Everyone (all 30 of them) except us just stood and watched as the drive went by. We followed the steers the whole two blocks.



We headed to Barnes and Noble after this to get our last two Christmas presents. Tomorrow I am going to mail ALL of our packages! After tomorrow, I will be done with Christmas shopping and mailing. I’ve never been done this early before. I highly recommend this lifestyle to get you organized, if for no other reason. Actually, we still have to do our Christmas cards, so we’re not completely finished. But close enough.


The county seat courthouse. Every county seat in Texas has these beautiful old courthouses.



Leaving Barnes and Noble, we noticed that the Christmas tree on the square had been lit up, so we went over to have a look. It was lovely. The bonus, though, was the quartet singing Christmas carols on the corner in front of Jamba Juice. They were dressed like characters out of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and sang whether people stopped to watch or not. I was amazed by how many just breezed by. In the five minutes that we were there, no one else stopped to listen. How sad.



This morning, after waking up late, we put some finishing touches on our Christmas decorations for the trailer. We’ll show the results in a future blog. . .