Another great national park

Readers of this blog might remember my account of several good instances of tax dollars at work during our recent trip east.

Now, I've got a western park to add to the list.

As many times as I've been to Colorado, I never had been to this jewel, tucked away in the far southwest corner of the state: Mesa Verde.

I hope to have more time later, when I'm back home with a constant internet connection, to give you a fuller account of our quick, but fascinating, visit here. For now, just some teasers (note: for larger versions of a picture, just click on it):

This was my first glimpse of any of the cliff dwellings: Spruce Tree House, the best-preserved of the sites. Doesn't it look like a cozy place for little city?

Close-up of Spruce Tree House structures

Cliff Palace, the largest site, seen from across the valley. Unfortunately we didn't have time for the tour of this place—definitely a reason to come back. (Click the image for a better view)

Wordless Wednesday: Colorado coffee

Bumper crop

Whether we have our wetter-than-usual winter, or our cooler-than-usual spring, or some combination to thank, it's been a great flower season in south Texas.

And that goes double for the workhorse of our floral arsenal, the all-summer-long-blooming crape myrtles.

Here's a typically rich example

These guys have been just loaded with blooms all over town, including a less-than-photogenic white one in our back yard that, nonetheless, leaves a generous offering of petals on my windshield every morning, as you can see on the right.

Other varieties of colors are also on display, like the lovely lilac shade on the left. I've even seen some deliciously dark, dark, red blossoms, but not in places where I could stop and snap a photo.

Most of them, though, are the luscious pink that you can see in my other photos. Although, trust me, my camera work doesn't really do the hue justice.

One of my neighbor's trees, with palm fronds in our yard serving as a screen

I get to see this wonderful lineup of beauties every day on the way to and from work. Some genius planted them all along Woodlawn Avenue's tiny esplanade some years ago, and paving the street with gold couldn't have made it any more spectacular!

Normally, these amazing trees bloom all summer, no matter what the water situation. I wonder if that will be true this year, though, since they've put out so much energy so early. Many of the trees still have plenty of buds, though, so I'm hopeful.

Wordless Wednesday: Austin eats

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Maiden voyage on a crowded sea

Well, it wasn't exactly a sea, but it definitely was crowded!

At the bottom of this post you will see the giant raft that we took our road trip to Tennessee to retrieve. Aching to get it into the water, we chose Father's Day in San Marcos, riding through Rio Vista Park, which would be crowded enough on a normal Sunday. But this week it was especially packed since the popular tubing river in New Braunfels was still closed for cleaning up from a terrible, localized flood they had there a couple of weeks ago.

I'm sure the toobers that saw our behemoth bearing down on them, once we got it launched, thought they'd wandered into the north Atlantic and come face to face with the Bismarck. Fortunately, we didn't run anyone over, at least no one that we know about...

Henry was quite pleased with the craft's performance on the three chute-like rapids that are the main features of the park, and the kids, who accompanied us on the maiden voyage, were pleased that there was still plenty of room for a cooler of adult beverages that aided in our enjoyment of the afternoon. [Beer snobs that they are, we did have to suffer some distress at the quality of the beverages that we were allowed to have with us, given the city's no-glass policy on the river. They accept the reasons for the policy, but that doesn't mean they can't complain about it.]

Here are the merry paddlers, snapped during a lull in the excitement:

Carey, in stylish bandana and shades...

Hal, somewhat sarcastically, enjoying his adult beverage...

Sally with the water cannon that was soon to be discovered to be non-functional...

... and our bold captain in the stern, trying to live down his Ahab reputation.

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My posts will be few and hopefully not too far between for the few weeks as I make plans for, and undertake, yet another epic road trip. This one I'll be making with my sister, as we drive up to Colorado, where I'll be spending a couple of weeks in the mountains, far away from hot, muggy, south Texas. But unfortunately without easy internet connectivity. I'll try to post as often as I can, though, amid my relaxed enjoyment of the Rockies.

Road food

...as distinct from street food.

We didn't have any truly great meals on our trip east, nothing to compare with some of our memories of eating in Europe or on some other American trips (like our wedding feast of lobster in Maine, or an Italian meal I had in San Francisco back in the '70's that I remember almost bite for bite...mmmm!). And we were good and ate most of our lunches in the car.

But we did eat out at some interesting places.

Unfortunately, I don't have my friend JaPRA's habit of taking pictures of food, and I didn't even take a picture everywhere we stopped. But I do have a few gastronomic experiences to share with you.

Like the obligatory Waffle House, where you can always count on a good, filling breakfast for a good price, served up quickly. You can find them in any southern town with a population of more than a dozen [strangely, in some areas—we think it's further east than we went this time—it's Pancake House instead, with the same yellow sign with a letter in each block and probably nearly identical menus]. We had our Waffle House breakfast this time in London, Kentucky.

We also sampled a Waffle-House-like, but more locally-flavored breakfast place in Waynesville, North Carolina. This was Clyde's, recommended by the clerk at our ridiculously cheap motel (in case you find yourself needing a bed on the east side of the Great Smokies sometime, check out The Lodge in Waynesville). Henry loves to get restaurant recommendations from the locals and they almost always prove to be spot on.

Another North Carolina town that proved to have good eats was Bryson City, right at the back door of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We were camping that night, our only night spent in the tent instead of in beds, but had made the executive decision before leaving home that we just wouldn't deal with cooking at any campsites.

So we had a rather luxurious dinner before turning in to our primitive [not really, but it was outside] shelter for the night, at Anthony's Pizza in the middle of touristy—but charming and nicely uncrowded—downtown Bryson City. (We beat the surely massive crowds that visit here during the peak summer season, a situation we'll take every time, even if it means having to hunt around a bit longer to find someplace open.)

The next morning we ate breakfast in style on the same little street, at Mountain Perks, a free-wifi coffee shop Hal and Carey had visited just a month or so before. Tea, bagels, and checking email—what more do you need?

The most unusual dining area on the trip was many hundreds of feet below the Kentucky countryside in Mammoth Cave's Snowball lunchroom. Halfway through our 4-mile Grand Avenue tour, they gave us a nice lunch/bathroom break in the really interesting eatery you can see at the right. We had taken munchies for ourselves (although we supplemented them with a candy bar from the canteen) but if we'd realized the variety of food we could have bought there for a fairly reasonable price (soup and sandwich would have been good) we might have saved ourselves the trouble.

Below is a look at some of our fellow diners. The ranger speaking to the folks at one of the tables is the gentleman that I mentioned in an earlier post—a fifth-generation Mammoth Cave guide!

We had one of our most "authentic" culinary experiences our last night on the road, in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Again following a motel clerk's recommendation, we hunted out the original Mulate's, where the seafood was good but the atmosphere was the real draw. Even though the place wasn't crowded by any means, on this weeknight, there were some enthusiastic fans and a few folks even got up and danced to the live Cajun music that accompanied our meal. [Amazingly, we made the acquaintance of a couple of other San Antonians at the register! It's a big country, but really a pretty small world, I guess.]

We sampled a local brew as well, just to top off the experience, as you can see on the left.

But we had one more road meal in us, meeting my brother in Houston for a well-timed lunch to break up the long homestretch drive. Here are Steve and Henry at the yummy Dry Creek sandwich shop in the Houston Heights, a neighborhood full of great restaurants and handily just off I-10 so we had little Houston traffic to deal with.

A combination of all this good food, too much sitting in the car, and too little exercising, pumped my weight up a few pounds over the course of the trip, travellers' hazard, I suppose. But it's worth it to enjoy the road cuisine that comes with an enjoyable road trip.

Wordless Wednesday: must be summer