So we headed down to the Florida Keys!

Now, I have to tell you guys, the last time I booked a hotel on Hotwire, I ended up sleeping in a conference room with a Murphy bed, but I am so glad I gave them another chance because this time, they delivered me this:

This is the Coconut Palm Inn in Tavernier, Florida, on Key Largo. We had an adorable little room with a private screened-in porch overlooking the pool and the water. It was so lovely we decided to stay three nights!

To the right of the hammocks above, there’s a little breakfast bar thing where the inn serves breakfast on the beach every morning. When we arrived, it was past office hours, so our keys and info were in a little envelope taped to the door (in a much more obvious place than when we had a similar situation in Big Bend, by the way); we didn’t talk to anyone. But there was a little juice dispenser on the breakfast bar with orange juice in it, so we helped ourselves. However, it turned out not to be orange juice, but rather a very strong cocktail!! Long story short, a couple had gotten married the weekend before right there on that very beach, and they were trying to use up their leftover liquor from their wedding reception by sharing it with other hotel guests (luckily — accidental cocktail theft would have been really embarrassing!). It turned out that the groom’s mom graduated from Delta State in 1972!! Small world, right??

Key Largo is the northernmost Key you’ll find on Highway 1, which we took down from the Everglades area, so we drove south to explore a little more.

One of the first things we did was meet Betsy, possibly the world’s largest lobster:

As you can see, Betsy is a Florida lobster or Caribbean spiny lobster… she’s native to the Keys. She lives in front of an art co-op!

Next, we went to visit some tarpon!

Tarpon are the cool-looking fishies you see above. They congregate at this one particular pier in Islamorada, and you can buy a bucket of fish to throw to them. Legend has it that the owner of the pier rescued and rehabilitated an injured tarpon there, then set him back in the water when he was all healed up; the tarpon kept returning back to the pier to get food, and I guess he told all his tarpon friends and now here we are!!

The water is very clear, and the tarpon are pretty aggressively interested in getting fish, so it’s a really unique experience. The tarpon will actually jump up out of the water to grab a fish out of the air or someone’s hand (and you have to be careful — they bite!!). We kept our hands a safe distance from the water, but others are more daring:

Thanks, tarpon!

Of course, tarpon aren’t the only wildlife in the Keys. There is a whole deer sanctuary for the special breed of Key deer:

The Key deer are endangered, but they are protected. They’re small — around the size of a German shepherd. Cute!

Key West (the southernmost Key) boasts a flock of wild gypsy chickens.

The southernmost point in the United States is in Key West.

Okay, so, technically this monument is not located exactly on the southernmost point, which is actually on a military base inaccessible to civilians, but it’s still pretty crazy to be closer to Cuba than to Miami.

I should mention that in our time in the Keys, we had a lot of really great food. We particularly enjoyed the Old Tavernier Restaurant in Tavernier and Island Fish Company in Marathon. Also, we got key lime pie at almost every opportunity (which added up to a lot of key lime pie!!). I really liked the pie at both Kermit’s Key West Key Lime Shoppe and at the Blond Giraffe Key Lime Pie Factory, but since the woman manning the Blond Giraffe was the rudest, meanest, most horrible customer service person I’ve ever met in my entire life (!), I have to give the edge to Kermit.

Thanks, the Keys!!

It was really hot out, but we did walk a couple of trails to check out the landscape and some impressive wildlife, including many anhinga:

We saw a ton of alligators, both young…

… and mature!

These guys were really huge!! At least twice the size of our friends on Avery Island.

We also communed with turtles…

and a woodpecker!

Thanks for your awesomeness, the Everglades!

This is one intense, Tabasco-loving place. Our adventure began at the Tabasco Visitor Center, where we were treated to a few small exhibits and a brief talk and video explaining Tabasco’s history and how it is made.

Okay, between you and me, I’ve never been that big a fan of Tabasco, and neither has Brian. But how it’s made is really interesting! First it starts with these peppers:

They are Tabasco peppers and they are grown there on Avery Island and also in South America (where there is a similar climate and they can grow year-round). They save seeds, though, so even the South American peppers are originally from Avery Island. All the peppers are hand-harvested, and workers are each issued one of these:

That is le petit bâton rouge, a stick painted the correct shade of red for perfect pepper ripeness. When the peppers match le bâton, they are harvested, then they are ground up along with a small amount of salt (also from Avery Island; there is a huge salt mine underneath the island — allegedly the salt mine is as deep as Mount Everest is high) into a “mash” :

The mash is then placed into these white oak barrels to age (at this point, at the South American pepper farms, the barrels are transported to Avery Island — all Tabasco ages at the warehouse there). The barrels are topped with a thick layer of salt from the island and allowed to ferment. The salt layer allows gases to escape without letting any impurities in. They sit there aging for about 3 years!

Another interesting aspect is that they are a no-waste company (which they reminded us many times!). When the barrels are no longer usable, they are chopped up into wood chips for cooking and sold in the extensive on-island gift shop.

Anyway, after aging for 3 years, the mash is then strained, mixed with vinegar and more salt from the island, and placed into another barrel where is it stirred intermittently for the next 28 days:

And then, finally, it is bottled and sent all over the world!

We got to walk through a wall of windows into the bottling plant; they were bottling the jalapeño variety that day. Yay!

The original Tabasco flavor is the only one that goes through the aging and everything, by the way.

After all that, we visited the gift shop where we could sample a bunch of products. They had all the Tabasco flavors, of course, but also some products made with Tabasco, including chili and ice cream. Brian tried some Tabasco cola, and I think the pictures tell the whole story:

We also learned that the word tabasco is actually from a Native American word meaning “land of hot and humid,” which quite aptly describes the climate on Avery Island. Check out the steam on Brian’s glasses and the camera lens from this photo snapped on our way out of the chilly, air-conditioned gift shop into the Tabasco-like outdoor climate:

Now, that was a lot of fun for one day, but it wasn’t over yet!!

The dude who invented Tabasco, Edmund McIlhenny, has spawned generations of family members who remain heavily involved in Tabasco sauce production. They select the best pepper plants and still own the company and live on the island and everything. But seeing how they are all zillionaires due to the wild success of Tabasco, it’s no wonder that some of the McIlhennys have chosen a slightly different path. One such McIlhenny was Edmund’s son Edward, who ran the company from 1898-1949. He did a good job of managing Tabasco, but he also pursued his other passions as a naturalist and conservationist, and he established Jungle Gardens on Avery Island as a refuge for the snowy egret (the refuge helped pull the snowy egret back from the brink of extinction). Jungle Gardens also contains many interesting exotic plants, a nearly 1000-year-old Buddha statue, and a lot (and I mean A LOT) of these:

YAY! I love an alligator. They are so cute! These are just little ones, too, so they are not very scary, although I’m sure they could hurt you if they felt like moving, which they did not because it was nine million degrees out. We didn’t see any snowy egrets because they had already migrated south, but we saw some other exciting birds:

And some really large bamboo:

After all that, we finally headed north toward Jackson, Mississippi. We have family events going on for the next few days, then we’ll be regrouping. Stay tuned!

Here are our mountain friends from last night in the sunlight:

Here’s the view from a trail we took near the park lodge:

Here we are by the sign that we saw driving in last night:

Here are Mule Ears Peaks (one of my favorites of the day):

Here is Santa Elena Canyon:

We saw some horses cooling off in the muddy water there:

We even walked up to get a closer view of the canyon (and as I mentioned, it was hot hot hot, so this was quite an achievement):

We also saw this totally cute lizard:

… and some desert on our way out of the park:

Driving out towards Marathon, Texas, we saw some vultures perched on some posts along the road:

We’re back in Fort Stockton tonight at the charming Days Inn where we spent the night last week. (Seriously, it’s a really nice Days Inn.) We are going to sleep in air conditioning, take hot showers in the morning, and enjoy this free wireless internet!! We continue our journey east tomorrow!

… 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!

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!!

That’s the Capilano Suspension Bridge. It’s a 230-foot drop down! And! It’s held up by cables, people!!! IT SWAYS! AND!!! Once you walk across… you have to walk back across to get out. I was so scared!!!!!

I made it, though. Somehow.

But that wasn’t all!

Once you’re across the bridge, you can do this thing called Treetops Adventure.

It’s actually pretty interesting (not to mention beautiful). They’ve put in these mini-suspension bridges between platforms around trees in the (temperate) rainforest. The platforms are engineered so they won’t interfere with the trees’ growth and development. It’s an eco-friendly, educational, beautiful, terrifying attraction!

Plus, check out this pretty hydrangea!

After enjoying the Capilano Bridge Park, we ventured over to Stanley Park to visit the Vancouver Aquarium.

Guess what? THEY HAVE A BABY BELUGA WHALE! She’s only a month old!!

She is so adorable! That’s her with her mom!

Here she is about to spray water on a bunch of unsuspecting children!!!!

After the aquarium, we checked out some more of the park. We met this guy on our way to dinner:

And we went to Third Beach:

Ahhhh, Vancouver. So pretty! Also, I should mention that it was a breezy 85 or 90 degrees. We were freezing, of course, since we’re now adjusted to Austin’s 115 degree summer days!

Kenton is a zookeeper at the National Zoo here in D.C. Normally he works at the small mammal house, but one day last week he was working at the kids’ farm at the end of the zoo, and he invited us to come by to feed the animals. Yay!

Did you know that when you hand-feed a donkey, this happens?

NEITHER DID I, but it was pretty awesome. And by the way, our VIP status made all the other zoo visitors jealous, especially when we were feeding the animals. Sorry, children!

Also, one of the donkeys totally pulled a Yellowstone bison-style dirt roll!

I love farm animals.

Also, the farm has this:

It’s actually a very educational giant pizza because it’s part of the Pizza Garden where there’s an exhibit on how various pizza components are grown. Good job, National Zoo. (Also, it turns out you’re supposed to be A CHILD to climb on the giant pizza, but I didn’t see the sign until after the damage was done. Whoops!)

In conclusion, the farm was awesome.

We also visited Mr. Beazley:

He used to live on the national mall in front of the natural history museum, and my dad used to take me there all the time when I was a little girl and I would climb all over Mr. Beazley (Brian did this too when he was a child). I’m glad we got one last visit!

Okay, so then, the next day, Kenton was back at small mammals, so we came back for another behind-the-scenes tour. Yay! We thought we better get used to some of the animals we might see in Texas, so we spent a lot of time with Baby the armadillo:

Isn’t she cute?!

We visited some of the other small mammals and concluded with Wicket the red panda:

Thanks, Kenton! We had an amazing time!!!

I’m pretty into these roadside picnic tables shaped like longhorns:

We were just innocently driving along and decided to stop for a bio break at an Exxon off I-35. When we first saw this giant cat statue, we thought it must be the Exxon tiger, but we were dead wrong.

Turns out it’s an Itasca Wampus Cat. Whoever built this fine monument to the mighty Wampus Cat helpfully printed out the legend of said cat on a dot matrix printer and posted it beside the statue. We think it’s been there for a while because it was pretty faded (it stands in direct sun), but we eventually figured out how to read it. And we’ve transcribed it for you!

THE LEGEND OF THE ITASCA WAMPUS CAT
(Authors: Diane Barnes, Brian Knox, Nancy Bowman)

What is a Wampus Cat?

Maybe the best definition was given in the San Antonio Express-News a few years ago in an article about legendary nicknames. “Wampus Cat n., a fierce animal that does not exist other than in the hearts and minds of the people in the town of Itasca.” The legend of the Wampus Cat, however, began with the Cherokee Indians, who settled in the eastern hills of Tennessee. Cherokee folklore is filled with tales of evil spirits lurking in the deep, dark forests that surround their villages.

Accounts of Wampus Cat sightings also come from Georgia. For years, outdoorsmen and residents of the swamplands in southeast Georgia have reported hearing strange, high-pitched screams late at night. A few claim to have seen a shaggy, man-like “cat creature” loping though the woods. The Wampus Cats sighted there are half-man and half-wildcat. Other accounts of Wampus Cats say that they have cat eyes, only they are bigger than any you have ever seen! They also leave enormous paw tracks. One report from Johnson City, Tennessee, in the 1950s reports that “the cat was about the size of a large spaniel. In fact, my daddy did mistake him for a dog at first. Then he noticed that the animal has stripes, just like a big tabby. No dog was ever marked like that! It reached Jones-Vance Pharmacy, raised up on its hind feet, put its paws on the windowsill, and peered into the window. After the cat had seen all that it had wanted to see inside Jones-Vance, it turned and, still standing on its hind legs, continued walking down the street and disappeared around the corner. Daddy said that his blood ran cold.”

What is a Wampus (sometimes spelled Wampas) Cat and where did it come from? Surely it’s no natural creature. Some people believe that the Wampus Cat is a human who turns into a cat at night – something like the old-World legend of the werewolf. No Wampus Cat has ever been seen in the daytime. Itasca chose Wampus Cat as its nickname sometime in the early 1920s, probably 1922 or 1923. The most common account of how it came about suggests that the student body was given the task of choosing a mascot. Everyone was thinking “what would make us proud”. Then one night, after a hard-fought victory, the team was celebrating in the locker room when one of the captains, Trav Burks, shouted “Wow! We really played like Wampus Cats tonight!” Silence fell over the room, and everyone knew the mascot was born. In a tragic twist of fate, Burks died in an automobile accident a few years after graduating.

Where did Trav Burks get the idea? Had he heard the legends? Or had he seen the elusive animal in the woods in the hills outside of town? We’ll never know for sure. But, we are sure of these things: The Wampus Cat is fierce. The Wampus Cat is the symbol of athletic and academic pride that lives in the hearts of the students, faculty, and citizens of Itasca. We may all have different ideas of what the Wampus Cat looks like, but we all know how it feels to be a Wampus Cat from old Itasca High!

Way to be, Itasca High Wampus Cats!!!

After that, we ventured on to Waco, Texas. Our destination was…

The Dr Pepper Museum!

Now, some of you may not be aware of this, but Brian is kind of a soda fanatic. In fact, Dr Pepper is his favorite. So we definitely had to make a stop at the birthplace of Dr Pepper and check out this museum. They have an interesting collection of Dr Pepper memorabilia and old bottles/cans as well as vintage bottling equipment and the like. One of my favorite parts of the museum was the very large collection of vintage vending machines, including some of the oldest vending machines (and even THE oldest Dr Pepper bottle container, the washbasin). This is just a sampling; they had dozens in there!

They also have an old-fashioned soda fountain in the museum where they use syrup made in the traditional way (with cane sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup) and have an actual soda water fountain for adding the carbonated water for each drink individually. You can even sometimes get a hot Dr Pepper (the drink was originally intended to be served hot), but alas, today was not our lucky day on that front. We did try some traditionally made cold soda, though:

I have to say, I really enjoyed the experience with the soda jerk and everything, but something is wrong with the water in Waco. It kind of tastes like… corn? We’re not sure. But it was definitely a factor at the Dr Pepper Museum and also the place we stopped afterwards for lunch. And by the way, that restaurant had flyers and posters up everywhere advertising a concealed handgun class that they are teaching in the restaurant in a couple of weeks. Texas!!!

Okay, so after our very pleasant afternoon in Waco, we headed south!

Did I mention how awesome the weather was today? It was at least 75 or 80 in the afternoon and sunny and beautiful. When we rolled into Austin around 7ish, the temp had dropped down to just 70 degrees. Yay!! (It was in the 20s in DC, so we couldn’t be happier to be here instead!)

One of the many wacky, quirky elements of Austin is its large population of grackles. They are everywhere. If you’ve seen the Hitchcock classic The Birds, you can imagine what they are like. My only hope is that they don’t turn evil and decide to rebel against the humans at some point. If the grackles organize, we are done for.

Now we’re settled in Austin for the next week. The plan is to get back on the road next Friday, so hopefully we can post an update then! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Yay!

They are cinnamon cookies with cinnamon-sugar fur on their front halves, and of course they have red cranberry noses. Don’t they totally resemble the real thing?

We leave tomorrow for our road trip south for the holidays. Check back for updates!