West Texas is selling…

… and we are buying! We began the day with a visit to Fort Stockton’s finest attraction, Paisano Pete:

Paisano Pete is 11 feet tall and 22 feet long. Some claim he’s the world’s largest roadrunner, but I’ve recently heard that there might be some competition. Regardless, he’s quite impressive.

We then headed back out on I-10, enjoying some beautiful scenery on the way:

Hold up a second. DO YOU SEE THAT?

YES! That is an awesome wildlife sighting!!! At first we assumed he was a mountain goat, but I now believe him to be a Barbary sheep. Usually these dudes are found in Africa, but… this one was in Texas. Anyway, he was just sitting up on this rocky butte observing the area and looking majestic. Thanks, Barbary sheep!

After that, we visited Balmorhea State Park, home to a crazy swimming pool:

The pool is spring fed and houses a variety of aquatic wildlife. It has 3.5 million gallons of water and is over 20 feet deep in some places. It’s the only pool I’ve ever seen where you can both swim and scuba dive. For some reason (maybe because I don’t know how to swim??), the depth of the pool completely freaked me out, and I didn’t go in even though it’s only 3 feet deep at one of the edges. Brian swam, though. Good job, Brian!

We also had an encounter with a hawk at the park!

Uhh… he is a hawk, right? After the whole Barbary sheep thing, I’m lacking confidence in my taxonomy skills.

We then ventured into the Davis Mountains!

We drove around a bit on a scenic loop (and by the way, we saw and photographed a tarantula, but I’m not including the photos here in case anyone is squeamish about that) (… okay, and also so I don’t have to look at him — I’m sorry, tarantula, but you give me the jibblies!) and had a lovely dinner at the Hotel Limpia in Fort Davis.

We explored the area a bit and finally ended up at…. as if the tarantula specifically and west Texas in general weren’t creepy enough… Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Center in Marfa!!!

We actually first learned of the Marfa lights on one of our first nights in Austin when we were flipping through our newly-hooked up cable channels and happened upon a Texas-on-demand channel (not kidding), which just so happened to be showing a program on the lights. I don’t know quite how to explain them because no one knows what they are, but basically if you stand in this one area, you can see these weird inexplicable lights flashing and changing colors and moving around in the distance, but science has yet to determine their cause or origin. Also, if you try to move close to the lights, they are no longer visible.

Personally, I subscribe to the theory that there’s some kind of atmospheric condition out there that bends the light in an unusual way.

They have a little viewing center where we watched the sunset while we waited for the lights:

And then, before we knew it… it was time!

Obviously they’re quite challenging to photograph, but you can sort of see one of them here from far away (this is a slow exposure, so in person the surroundings were quite dark, but the bright moonlight illuminates everything in the photos):

… and zoomed in:

They move, you guys. It’s pretty weird!

After that, we settled into the Riata Inn in Marfa for the night (thanks, friendly front desk man!). Super 8s are none too common ’round these parts. The Riata Inn was on par for the most part, though it has a way nicer staff and spotty internet and shower. Anyway, we forgive them. We’re off again tomorrow!

We’re in Marfa! YAY! But, internet is spotty. Boo. So, we’ll post a real update when we have more reliable service. And it’ll be a doozie!

We sure covered a lot of ground today. And to cover a lot of ground, you need shoes. So we started our Wednesday with the World’s Largest Cowboy Boots (I’m in this picture, by the way, being totally dwarfed by these boots. I’m in the middle!):

The weird thing about these is that they are in front of a big shopping mall. Specifically, they reside directly outside the Saks Fifth Avenue in said mall. There’s no sign or anything, so I don’t know how they came to be at San Antonio’s North Star Mall, but… that’s where they are. Still, pretty awesome!

Note the conspicuously absent spurs!!

Then we got on I-10 and headed west. We don’t really have a specific itinerary for anything, but we have some vague ideas about going out to Big Bend. It’s a long drive, but fortunately there are interesting diversions along the way, such as this:

Yep. That would be “Stonehenge II.” It’s in Hunt, Texas, or Kerrville, Texas, depending whom you ask. Basically, this one dude decided to put a big rock in this other dude’s field, and it became a little friendly joke, and then they decided to build a stonehenge. I can’t really explain it more clearly than that. Dude #2 (Al Sheppard) conceptualized the project and commissioned dude #1 (Doug Hill) to design and construct it.

This stonehenge has a couple of differences from the original. First of all, it’s made of concrete and steel. Also, it’s about 2/3 the size, and it is not oriented to the sun. But perhaps most importantly, Stonehenge II includes these:

Why are there Easter Island-looking heads at Stonehenge II in Hunt/Kerrville, Texas, you ask? Stonehenge II’s sign answers:

The Easter Island statuary, for Al, was a natural partner for Stonehenge II. He had visited Easter Island and now thought the mystery of the construction of those magnificent statues was a complement to the mystery of Stonehenge.

Can’t argue with that!

Incidentally, some of you may remember we also took a trip to Foamhenge in Virginia a couple of years ago (pre-blog)… so this didn’t seem as random to us as maybe it should.

After thoroughly enjoying the hengey goodness, we continued west. Do you guys remember when we went to California and saw a bazillion windmills in Techachapi (AWESOME COINCIDENCE: that post is from ONE YEAR AGO TODAY!!!)? Well, today we saw this:

That is a single blade from one of the large energy windmills rolling down the interstate on a big ol’ truck. We’ve seen this a couple of times before but haven’t been speedy enough to get a snapshot. The ginormousness of this doesn’t totally convey, I think. They are HUGE! And kind of freaky!! Way to be, energy windmill blades!

We also pulled off for a scenic overlook near Junction, Texas.

Sooooo, we did walk along this very obvious path so we could enjoy the view, but I must admit we didn’t stay long. I think the trespassing issue applied only to what looked like some private property on the side of the sign we didn’t walk down, but we are in Texas and we thought we better not push our luck lest shots are fired. We did get to see this, though!

I love a good succulent. I did totally get attacked by a cactus, though, I guess because we (possibly) trespassed.

Moving on to Junction, we paused to enjoy the deer antler tree:

I don’t know if this is just for Christmas or what, but it looks like they’re set up for holiday-style celebrations year-round:

Right next to the antler tree, we enjoyed this charming tribute to (we assume) the local high school football team:

Outside of Ozona, Texas, we had a wild turkey encounter!

Nice! Turkeys are jittery and really fast, so it’s hard to take a decent picture of them. We got really lucky with this little flock. Thanks, wild turkeys!

Ozona is the county seat of Crockett County, and they have a pretty awesome Davy Crockett memorial:

Please note the inscription:

Thanks for the awesome advice, Davy Crockett memorial!

After Ozona, it was all sunsets and big sky as we headed west:

We’re now in the quite lovely Days Inn in Fort Stockton, Texas, and looking forward to seeing where the journey takes us tomorrow! GET U SOME!!

You guys, moving is horrible. I can’t articulate exactly why, but I can tell you that the sum of a move is a million times more horrible than its horrible parts. Now, this may not be the fault of the move per se, but part of the problem for us is that we tend to do things at the eleventh hour, so for our first night of our new housing-optional lifestyle, we didn’t want to try to go really far away or anything. However, we did need a place to chill out and recover for a few days. It was definitely the right decision, as we found ourselves making our last trip to make a deposit in storage at, like, 9:47 pm. And they close at 10!

Anyway, we’ve both been to San Antonio separately before, but we decided to visit again, and I think it’s pretty obvious why we came. Remember?

I’m pretty sure a pilgrimage to the Alamo is required of every Texan. DON’T FORGET IT.

So, the thing about the Alamo is the thing about any battlefield-turned-park. It’s the juxtaposition of knowing it was the scene of a completely horrific, bloody nightmare pitted in your brain against the lovely tranquil garden into which the site has been converted. Kind of weird, right?

Anyway, other than that, we’ve been walking around the riverwalk and sleeping. Both of us are physically exhausted! But this has been a rejuvenating couple of days, and we’re ready to move on tomorrow to… well, we haven’t decided yet. But we are heading west!

Guess what?

We’re on the road again!

Unexpected circumstances occurred and we finished moving out of our Austin apartment yesterday. We put all our stuff in storage (with the help of some truly incredible friends who incidentally went WAY beyond the call of duty to assist us!!!) and haven’t gotten a new permanent residence. We’ve decided to become “housing optional” for now and are traveling again. We actually have even less of a concrete plan than we had the last time we up and started a road trip… so we hope you’ll come along for the ride!

It was sad to pack up and leave Austin. We weren’t in love with our apartment specifically, but we sure will miss the wonderful friends we made and the amazing sunsets we got to enjoy every night for the past six months from our balcony:

Many more interesting and exciting adventures to come!!

In an effort to stop the constant spamming that was overrunning our site, we accidentally locked down all commenting. That problem has been fixed. Please comment away.

P.S. Thanks for the heads up, Kenton!

Our final destination in the Pacific Northwest was Portland, Oregon!

Portland boasts a really awesome elk sculpture:

David P. Thompson drove sheep to Portland over the Oregon Trail. From 1879-1882 he served as Portland’s Mayor. In 1900, Thompson’s gift of this bronze elk sculpture was intended to commemorate elk that once grazed nearby. Roland Hinton Perry sculpted the elk.

Nicely done, Portland.

Portland also boasts a really, really cute food trailer!

They serve grilled cheese sandwiches (several ways) and tomato soup, and you can eat on a converted school bus with tables in it. FYI, if it’s been a long time since you’ve been on a school bus, chances are you are now taller and that will be weird. But still really fun!

Portland also boasts Mt. Hood.

We got to wave goodbye to Mt. Hood from the air as we left. Thanks, Oregon!

We enjoyed some truly amazing views of Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens on our way down to Portland:

We also ran into this random lovely spot on our way to look at Bigfoot statues:

And we took a brief detour up to Mt. Rainier National Park. After all, we have just a couple of months left on our national parks pass, so we’re trying to make the most of it!

We had perfect weather every single day of our trip except this day. Our park day was really, really cloudy and drizzly.  So, this made for a different experience than what we had expected, but it was still gorgeous and lovely in its own special way! We loved the moss hanging off these trees:

And we saw some other fun and interesting plants:

Here’s a photo from Narada Falls:

Because of some roadwork, we were “stuck” at Christine Falls for a while.

They were so amazing that we could have stayed all day, but we forged ahead to the visitor’s center at Paradise. We saw some incredible wildflowers and clouds in the Paradise area:

Because we were so short on time, we elected not to hike to the viewpoint to see one of the glaciers. We thought we probably wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway through the cloud. But we did see some glacier pieces around!

And a trip to a national park is never complete until you see some wildlife.

We drove from Seattle to Portland, Oregon, and enjoyed many an exciting attraction along the way.

For example, here in the town of Maltby, Washington, we found an espresso stand shaped like a coffee cup:

The Colonel Sanders weathervane out front is just a bonus. Speaking of chicken, we paid a visit to the World’s Largest Egg in Winlock, Washington — formerly a major egg producer, apparently.

By the way, when we were taking photos of the egg, the locals looked at us like we were straight c-r-a-z-y. As if no one comes to Winlock just to check out the World’s Largest Egg. Come on!

We also went to Chehalis, Washington, to see Yard Birds:

I actually don’t really know why these guys are here. They seem to be part of a large shopping complex involving a tire store and a tattoo parlor? I’m not sure. There wasn’t anyone around, so it was mostly just us, these birds (or this single bird with a mutant second bird coming out of his side..?), and our rental car in a huge parking lot.

Moving on, we saw these metal cow sculptures outside of Olympia, Washington:

In addition, the Pacific Northwest is really, really into sasquatches:

They even leave out food for them:

We also saw a film location from Harry and the Hendersons:

While Bigfoot didn’t choose to reveal himself to us directly, we know he’s out there.

We also went to Kid Valley, Washington, to see the buried A-frame, a house that was partially completed when Mt. St. Helens decided it had had enough already and might as well blow up. The A-frame was covered in ash:

I actually don’t know much about the Mt. St. Helens eruption. I was only a couple of months old when it happened, and my parents never mentioned it to me that I can recall. I’m assuming they were preoccupied at that point with not sleeping and changing diapers and whatnot and possibly didn’t even know about it (just kidding!). But Brian is old enough to remember it being a big deal, so being in this area was especially exciting for him!

Our time in Seattle was really short, so we had to make it count! We went directly from the airport to Pike Place Market…

…so we could get crumpets.

They’re very important to us.

And we visited Beecher’s to observe cheesemaking with a keen, educated eye.

That’s a lot of curd, y’all!

We also visited the Fremont Troll!

And we saw a sparkly penguin!

And another rocket!!

And in case all that isn’t enough awesome for you, we also happened upon a giant statue of Lenin holding a sandwich:

(He stands in front of Royal Grinders, a sandwich and gelato place… so I guess it’s pretty convenient for him to get his lunch there.)