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

San Angelo: Fort Concho and Miss Hattie's Bordello

Fort Concho exceeded our expectations.  We have been to many forts in our travels over the years, some more fully restored than others. This one was incredibly restored, and the buildings were staged with many original pieces, pieces from the time period, or recreations of pieces.  We saw that guided tours were given for a nominal fee, so we decided to take it.  The guide said it would last about an hour, but it was two hours of incredible interest and fun. Our guide, Rocia, has a degree in history and was very knowledgeable.  Also taking a guided tour meant that she opened up every room for us to go in and explore instead of just standing outside a gate and staring at it.  We were very impressed.

The fort was established and operated between 1867 and 1889 to protect the bustling town of San Angelo from marauding Comanches and Apaches.  They left it once those tribes were no longer a threat.  The fort buildings were then sold and became stores and private residences, so over the years almost all of the limestone buildings remained intact. One officer's house and one enlisted men's barracks crumbled, but the rest remained.  In the mid-1900s a committee headed by one lady purchased them back and began restoration.  It is always amazing to see a town preserve its history.

Then we had lunch at Miss Hattie's, a restaurant in what was a bank.  There was a tunnel under the bank to the bordello a few doors down, so now the restaurant is themed as a bordello.  The actual bordello is a museum, so we went on a tour of that, too.  It operated from 1902-1952, so more modern than the fort.  There were plenty of bordellos along Concho Street when the fort was opened, too!  Miss Hattie lived to be over 100 years old and remained in San Angelo even after her bordello was closed down by the Texas Rangers.  When it was being restored as a museum, she was brought in as a consultant to get it right.  Because she had to get out quickly, many large pieces of furniture and all of the bed frames were left behind and are in the museum today.

We just had a marvelous time.  Then it was a 90 minute drive north to Abilene, where we are right now.  We are spending two nights in Abilene and hope to see two more forts and two museums before heading to Amarillo.

I got through eating lunch out two days in a row and still lost weight.  I made reasonable choices at the lunches and compensated for those calories by making good choices at dinner and bedtime.  This morning I am down another pound or so to 263.9, which means I passed my first milestone of 265.  WOW!  Now I need another milestone.  The next one is 255, which is what I weighed at Lowell's wedding in July of 2014.  I hope to hit that one before the end of August.

Looking at the exhibits in the Visitor Center as we waited for the tour to start

Rocia explaining how the six horses pulled the heavy artillery wagon

Enlisted men's barracks.  The bed frames were cast from the original molds, so they were the exact shape and size.  

We didn't think Mark would fit, but he did!  We were thrilled that the guide let him try it out.  The thin  mattress would have been stuffed with hay.  This one is not, but it is thin and just laying on a piece of wood.

Each barracks had its own mess hall behind it.

In the headquarters building.  

Front of the headquarters

Heading over to the hospital

One of the wards.  Other rooms in the building are not open but include another ward, a surgery, a pharmacy, the doctor's office, and his living quarters.

The school/chapel

The minister was both the teacher during the week and the preacher on Sunday.  Children at the fort went to school 9-3 every week day.  In the evening, enlisted men who could not read or write came to school.

Except for the General's house, all the officers' houses were duplexes.  Your rank determined how many rooms you were entitled to have.

The wives liked to have a proper Victorian parlor and tried to live a lifestyle of gentility even on the frontier.  Many had servants and nannies, but they had to share their assigned rooms with them.

This is a National Historic Landmark, so I got another stamp for my Passport.

Then off to lunch at Miss Hattie's.

There are many sheep ranches outside of San Angelo, so thee are sheep statues all over town.  San Angelo used to be a major supplier of wool.

The door to the upstairs museum.

The first room at the top of the stairs, one of two parlors where the men would wait.

This museum and the restaurant both had original tin ceilings.

An original sofa left behind my Miss Hattie when she got closed down.

All the bed frames are original, but nothing else in the room was here.  They have done a great job of collecting period pieces and staging each room.

The red fainting couch was in Miss Hattie's private parlor.  She left it behind, too. Originally, Miss Hattie and her husband bought this building with the intention of having a store on the first floor and living above it.  Shortly after, they bought it, they got divorced.  Miss Hattie got the upstairs living quarters and her ex-husband got the first floor store.  She turned the upstairs in to the bordello and moved to an apartment a few blocks down the road.

There were seven or eight bedrooms all together up there.  Very interesting tour.

Good Showers and Austin

My calories were perfect yesterday; I walked three miles around the Austin state capitol building; my weight remained the same at 265.5.  Whew!  Got that all out of the way.

Mostly my mind is on showers this morning.  At home, I take a good shower for granted.  There were years in some of our houses where the shower was better than others, but in Florida we had our master bath shower remodeled shortly after we moved it, so it is perfect.  On the road in various motels, you never know what you'll get.

The Clarion here in San Angelo, Texas has been the most perfect one yet!

What makes a perfect shower for me?  There are several things: good water that is not too soft so the soap rinses off well; strong water pressure, a shower head with good distribution and coverage at a good height; non slip tub surface, plenty of hot water, easy to turn on/off and regulate; curved shower curtain bar; grab bar; shelf space to hold all my supplies; a drain that drains well.  Is that too much to ask? Apparently, because it is hard to get ALL of that in one place.

In Houston I had very few of those things.  The tub was so slippery that I was literally afraid I would fall, plus it had no grab bar or shelf to put things on. There was literally nothing to hold on to.  I spoke to the front desk after the first of the four nights, so they literally went to some store and bought me a bath mat!  That made me very happy.  In San Antonio, the shower head was so high that I could not reach it at all.  It sprayed the water nearly all the way at the back wall.  Tough to use for a short person like me.  The water also did not drain at all well in San Antonio, and the water was a bit too soft for my taste.

Ah...this Clarion has it all.  I have no complaints this morning.  Sadly, we are only here one night, so who knows what we'll get when we check in tonight in Abilene, Texas.  We will be there two nights and then three nights in Amarillo before heading to New Mexico.  I am hoping the showers will be good ones.

Austin was great but short.  We only went to see the state capitol building, which was amazing.  We took a free, hour long guided tour, went to the Visitor Center, and strolled around the beautiful 22 acre grounds looking at all the statues.  It was three miles of walking and two and a half hours of time, but totally worth it.  There is also a kosher deli and shopping area in a local grocery store in Austin.  Mark got a grilled chicken and avocado wrap, and I got a pastrami sandwich on rye.  Both were fabulous!  There is only one clothing optional public park in all of Texas, and it is just outside Austin, so naturally, Mark wanted to see it.  It is called Hippie Hollow, and it's on Lake Travis.  The lake is HUGE and formed from damming up the Colorado River,  the same way Lake Mead was formed by damming up the other Colorado River in Nevada.  The views of the lake as we drove to the park were spectacular.  I declined to go down the steep stairs to get to the rocks below.  Mark never did fully understand how people got in and out of the lake to swim, although he saw three swimmers.  Mostly people sun themselves on the big flat rocks.  It is ADA accessible with a switchback path and some benches in the handicapped section.  Mark sat on those benches, sunning himself for awhile and talking to the other people there.  There were quite a few cars in the parking lot.  I sat in the car playing puzzles on my phone and looking at Facebook for the hour that he was in the park.

At 3:40 p.m. we then faced a four hour drive to San Angelo, Texas.  What a drive!   No interstate takes you from Austin north to San Angelo.  It was a beautiful drive through rolling hills and then large, flat ranches and farms on two lane country roads that were marked SEVENTY-FIVE MPH!  Yes, 75 on a two lane road.  Such fun.  Well mostly it was easy because there was not a lot of traffic.  We made it to the San Angelo Denny's by 7:30 p.m. and checked in to this beautiful Clarion hotel by 9 p.m.  Another good day.

Today we are going to Fort Concho National Historical Landmark.  Then we will visit Miss Hattie's Bordello in downtown San Angelo, and we plan to eat there for lunch, too.  Then off to Abilene.

Here are pictures from Austin.

This is actually in the Denny's in San Antonio on our last night.  We ate there three nights in a row, so he finally decided he must have a picture with Pancake!

First view of the capitol building.

Historic Land Office building is now the Visitor Center.

The original painting of Houston on the ground talking to Santa Anna.  We have seen diaramas and reproductions of this painting in many places on this trip, but I did not realize the original was here in Austin!  And it's very BIG!

Looking up into the dome from the rotunda, main level.

Senate Chambers.  The legislature only meets January to April in odd years.  

Listening to the tour guide, who was excellent, speak about this painting, Dawn at the Alamo.

This building was the first one in Austin to get electricity.  There are two chandeliers like these that are original and the first to light up in Austin.  Note the bulbs spell out Texas!

We toured the entire original building, including the basement, and then went down to the sub-basement level and over to the modern Capitol Extension area, all underground.

At the far end of the extension, you can go out to this plaza, which is below street level.  Where the sky is at the top is ground level.

View of the back of the capitol when you come up to ground level from the extension.

Some of the two dozen statues on the grounds.  This one is a memorial to Pearl Harbor.

WW II memorial

Statue honoring pioneer women

Back to the front of the building.  Behind Mark is a big statue honoring the Texas Rangers.

The big monument behind me is to the Alamo.

Scarfing down my pastrami sandwich in the car.

Heading down the path to the lake at Hippie Hollow Park.

View of Lake Travis from the park.

View of Lake Travis as we were driving away from the park.

Monday Weigh-in and leaving San Antonio

So let's get the weight report over with first.  I'm down a little from yesterday to 265.8.  That means I have lost three pounds in the two weeks since we left home.  I will take that.  I have also lost 15 pounds sine June 22 when I started dieting seriously again.  15 pounds in five weeks is amazing!  I am happy this morning about all of this.

Today I am going to be eating a kosher deli sandwich from a kosher restaurant in Austin after we visit the state capitol, then we will head to San Angelo tonight as we begin the northward journey up into the panhandle.

Yesterday we had a wonderful final day in San Antonio, but unfortunately, I forgot to put the battery back in my camera.  I took a lot of pictures on my cell phone, but I can't get them in to the blog from there.  If you are a Facebook friend, then you already saw the best of the bunch.

We took the narrated trolley tour and got off at just one stop to go up the Tower of Americas.  That was built in 1968 for the Hemisphere World's Fair.  We saw a 4D movie called Skies over Texas and went up the tower for just a few minutes.  It was actually a long walk from the trolley stop to the tower, and since the trolley only came around once every hour, we didn't want to miss the next one.  Then we just stayed on the whole way around listening to the narration.  When we got back to Alamo Plaza, we had our usual Subway lunch followed by a lot of walking on the River Walk and the half hour narrated boat ride in the San Antonio River through the city.  All of that was a lot of fun.  I bought myself the definitive biography of Sam Houston in the Visitor's Center, and then we walked down to the Buckhorn Saloon and Museum.  We didn't go through the museum, but I bought Mark a 20 ounce locally brewed beer and a diet Coke for me.  The Buckhorn was established in 1881 and is the oldest continually operating saloon in Texas.  I took a lot of pictures in there because "they use antlers in all of their decorating."  In fact there were stuffed heads of every imaginable creature including giraffe and elephant, so it was kind of weird, too.  Mark also enjoyed the shooting gallery.  We got back to the hotel around 5 p.m. and Mark did laundry before our Denny's dinner.

It's been a great vacation so far.  Today is day 14 of 64.

I'm sorry there are no pictures for today.  I definitely put the battery back in the camera, so there will be pictures tomorrow of the Texas state capitol building in Austin.