We crossed into Texas around noon and kept driving to  to just south of Jefferson at a trailer park for the night. West Texas, being just west of Louisiana, is very similar to it also. Jefferson was one of the first towns in Texas because you could get there by paddle wheel boat up the bayous. It was a very important destination, being used as a port to head on west. It reminded us of Niagara-on-the-Lake, quaint, clean and has lots of Bed&Breakfasts.

Next morning were off early as we have a few stops ahead of Waco.

This leg of the journey is a bit cross country from Texarkana to Waco. We travelled through East Texas and the famous East Texas oil field of Kilgore, TX. At the time of the find in 1930 this was a farming area in the grasp of a depression. Within 2 years, there were 31,000 oil wells producing from this oil field and oil is still being produced today. By the end of 1931 this oil field was producing 1 Million Barrels per day! It was, at the time, so large, that all existing oil fields in the world combined, dild not match the production here. This oil field is what supplied the allied forces during WWII.

Kilgore, TX has a great little museum Called the East Texas Oil Museum and they did a real nice job on this one. It has a re-creation of a "Downtown" scene taken from the heydays and the picture sure looks real, don't it? It's an inside the building scene with trucks, mules and all, getting stuck in mud! That's me talking to Robert in front of the drug store. Robert kept with us the whole tour and gave us a real nice description of the events and the museum for those days. Heck, even the mud looks real! This place boomed like no other. The Lease map which shows the location of all the oil wells looks like a mosquito screen with a small "x" next to each other all across the oil field showing all 31,000 wells. Heck this town was so busy, they just plunked oil wells everywhere and as you can see from this picture to the right, they were all over inside the town too. Heck, I saw one picture where they has this wildcat well on fire in and amongst the buildings of town, and they were dousing it from the top of a building located next to it. There goes the neighbourhood!

Next stop was in Tyler, a few miles west of Kilgore, also an oil town but a "white collar" oil town. You see, there's thems who work for the money and thems that has the money, in the oil business, and those two don't normally live together! Tyler is the rose capital of Texas. What they do here is grow roses, tons of roses and to top it all they have a Rose Pageant every year and it's been going on since the early 1930's also. This picture is from the Rose Pageant Museum, located at the West Texas Fair grounds. As you can see, the queen has a pretty elaborate dress eh! Well there are dozens of these as they make a new one every year, along with a crown, jewellery and all the fittins! It's quite something to see.

We got into Waco at about noon and dropped the trailer off at Sam's Club so we could navigate the City easily. It's not all that large at about 110k population. Waco is a nice typical western town. Wide streets, not too many hi-rises, magpies flying around, cacti here and there, the Brazos river running through the downtown lined with turn of the century 2-3 storey brick buildings, and it's pretty quiet too for a Saturday, hardly any traffic! It's starting to feel like the south! 

Here in Waco we're seeing the Dr. Pepper museum as it was the place the drink was invented, the oldest suspension bridge in America AND the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame Museum! First lets do the my favourite, the Rangers.

What a place,. They got it all, the badges, the old guns, bat wing chaps, saddles, gear, memorabilia, paintings, brass statues galore, everything. You can smell WESTERN here and these guys were it. Making the law where there was no law. Taming a riot with only one Ranger, cause...."One riot only needs ONE Ranger!" Creating posses and going out into the wild and "gettin rid o' the problems anyhow you saw fit"! Those were the days! The museum has priceless paintings and bronze statues all over the place... to die for stuff.

For example, the above picture is a complete collection of all the Colt handguns made between 1848 and 1900! and this picture on the right is an example of the paintings on display. If you like Western, you gotta be there.... Ken!

Then there's Dr. Pepper. This museum is nostalgic but lacks in quality. It has displays of bottles, old bottling equipment and a theatre showing old commercials... can you spell booooorig! and it takes a whole 10-15 minutes to see it all and for a fee on top of that... Hmmmmmm...

The Brazos river in the downtown area was once a cattle crossing  area when the big cattle drives were being made.

In 1870, a suspension bridge was built over it and at that time it was the longest suspension bridge in America. Used to cross people and cargo, cowboys also used it to cross their cattle herds.

Time to move on. The next morning we got a real push out-a-here. Can you believe it, we had frost all over the ground!!

Hello, let's git out-a-here...

November 16-18, 2008, Austin, TX left 7:00 AM,  50F got in before noon in 72F Diesel $2.66 - Gas $1.85

We're planning on spending a few days in Austin, State capitol and one of the three oldest cities in Texas. We decided to use the nearest Statre park as our campground and we found out they charge a $4.00 entrance fee per head PER DAY! hello, Texas has expensive parks when you add to that the $21.00 campground fee. On top of that, their Summer and Winter prices are the same, but in Winter, they don't have all the activities or accessories going such as Ranger tours, pools, etc. 

But, the view we got was really nice. Lots of deer and wild turkeys and no neighbours!.

On day one, we went to see the State Capitol building as it was a Sunday and it was open. What a beautiful building. Made of "pink" quarried granite outside, it's the same pink granite you see all over Northern Ontario and stone throughout the inside. The construction is top notch with massive hardwood trim on door entries, terrazzo flooring throughout, and extensive use of boxed ceiling.
But the most spectacular aspect of this building is the central rotunda / dome section. From the inside it is a masterpiece. Look at this top picture and you'll see a head looking down at us. Well he's about halfway up to the top. The side picture shows you 4 levels and that top level is where that guy above is.

From the outside, it is majestic and extravagant looking with the pillars appearing to hold up the top portion of the dome.

The building was built in the late 1800's and it is chock full of original paintings depicting various historical events in the creation of the State of Texas. Texas was a country and then became a state! Texas has been under 5 different flags beginning with the Spaniards, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas and now the United States. In there, if you wanted to, you could add the temporary republic of Texas which lasted a few months before the "Official Republic" was formally accepted by State government (a bloody red right arm with a sword in hand), and of course the period it flew under the Confederate flag during the civil war. This state has had more wars than the Country has, I think.

The next day we spent at the Bob Bullock Texas State Museum. What a masterpiece they built here. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed, so we can't show you too much. The building is huge and it took all day to see it all. The museum expresses the creation of the State of Texas from the beginnings before the Spaniards. It has two theatres and we saw 2 great movies, one on a huge I-Max screen. There was also a special showing depicting the connection between Presidents and cowboys with a huge display of various cowboy paraphernalia and how many of their Presidents used the cowboy image in their presidency...ie: Bush in Iraq during the first gulf war.
The whole process does a real good job of explaining how and why Texas is what it is. As they say, "You don't need to be born in Texas, to be a Texan...Being Texan is a state if mind"

 And then again, the building itself was something to see... as it should of course, this is Texas, right! Austin traffic was really good. On Sunday, we drove through to downtown as though driving through a small town anywhere else. Then on Monday, we drove around the downtown at 9:30 in the morning, to the Museum without any traffic jam at all. Hey, were talking the State Capitol here. Sudbury is a lot busier! Entrance fee to this museum is $15.00 each includes 2 movies, underground museum parking for $6.00 and a great lunch for $14.85 (huge salad with smoked turkey and cheese, pastrami sandwich on marbled rye bread and a 2" thick cheese cake to top it all... at the museum!!!) All in all, it made for another great day on the road to a winter heaven. Tomorrow we leave for Corpus Christi, the slow way via Hwy 183 through Goliad, "the other Alamo" no one seems to hear about.