Abilene, Texas named for Abilene, Kansas

Huntsville, Texas was named for Huntsville, Alabama.  I wonder how often that happens around the country.

My weight is NUTS.  I was so happy yesterday, and I ate only 1485 calories.  Then this morning my scale, on the same tile of the same floor as yesterday, said I was up either 3 or 4 pounds, depending on which time I want to believe.  I got up three times to pee in the middle of the night, too.  I thought I would be down a few tenths not up three or four full pounds.  Well, all I can think is that the 263.9 yesterday was the wrong one.  This morning I got either 267 or 268.3.  They both suck!  I probably need a new scale.

We had a great day again yesterday.  First we visited the Buffalo Gap Historic Village in the nearby town of Buffalo Gap.  It consisted of 15 buildings moved to that location and restored and set up to take you through various years.  The first set represented 1883, then 1904, then 1925.  After that we went to a new museum in downtown Abilene called Frontier Texas!  The exclamation point is part of their title.  LOL  It wasn't in the old Fodor's Guide, but we are glad Mark found it online.  It covers the history of Texas from the Native Americans through the Spanish, the war for Independence, statehood, frontier life, and cattle drives.  The way they did it was unique with two excellent video presentations, one to start the museum and one at the very end.  In between were excellent interactive exhibits.  Of course, we had heard most of that information before, but it's always good to see it again for reinforcement.  This museum used actors to portray real people in holographic-like presentations, speaking about their personal stories.  We learned some stories of people we did not know before.  It was just a lot of fun.

Today we are driving about 4-5 hours up to Amarillo through the panhandle.  Halfway we will stop in the town of Lubbock to go to the Ranching Heritage Center.

We had audio wands on this tour.  They were very entertaining with music and different voices for each talk.

Who doesn't like an old Model-T Ford?

County Courthouse and Jail.

Log cabin

This is NOT the log cabin I want to live in.

Train station with its segregated waiting rooms.

Mark, I don't think a train is going to come.

One of the buildings is a modern museum.  This is a beautiful piece of the buffalo in Buffalo Gap.

Enjoying a break on a chair in the air conditioning while listening to more stories.

There's always a school!

Then off to Frontier Texas! where there are gigantic buffalo weather vanes spinning in the breeze.  They looked REALLY cool!

Mark is pointing to Abilene.  We are truly deep in the heart of Texas.

I loved the furniture in the lobby of the museum.

After the first video presentation, we started going through all the exhibits.

He was a Comanche Chief.  An actor portrayed him in both videos, then we could push buttons to have him speak about other topics in sort of a holographic-like setting.

There he is talking about life before the white men came.

Buffalo Soldier at Fort Concho, which is where we were yesterday.

Butterfield Overland Stage...this stagecoach was built for by Fox Studios for the movie Hombre with Paul Newman. It was used in several other movies as well.

In the second theater with swivel seats because it was a surround-sound-vision, wild and crazy show that put you in  the middle of a cattle stampede and a gunfight in a saloon.

View from our hotel window