Friday, Day 4, Part 2

Howdy, y’all!

I wrote most of this last night after I swore to myself that I was going to sleep…and then, afraid that I’d forget something if I waited, I popped my last wine cooler and ended up staying up until 2am.  Now it’s 9 am here and I’ve already gotten ready to face the day (I had another Texas-shaped waffle…I put peach yogurt on it so that I could feel healthy…LOL!) but I have to say that the bed keeps encouraging me to take a little nap!

Good news: once my camera dried out, it seems to functioning correctly; that new one will definitely be going back.  Now for Friday’s recap:

Every hotel on this trip has included a “hot” breakfast; some have been better than others.  Yesterday’s was good: cheesy eggs, a touch of sausage gravy on a croissant, and fresh fruit. 

Fueled for the day, I visited the Eisenhower birthplace…he doesn’t remember living there since the family moved when he was 18 months old, but he returned for the dedication of the property.  I was the only person on the tour…I really must have chosen obscure destinations for this trip ‘cuz that seems to be happening a lot!

The bakery where I was planning to pick up lunch (at 10:30 in the morning) wasn’t quite ready for the lunch rush so I made do (LOL!) with cookies, cupcakes, and the yummiest lemon bar I may ever have had.  Fruit, grains (as in flour), protein (the eggs in the cookies and cupcakes)…that should be a well-rounded lunch, right?

My next stop was a scrapbook store.  I bought stamps…I’m not sure what stamps but I’m pretty sure I bought stamps.  I didn’t even bring my bounty in from the car tonight so whatever I bought is resting comfortably in the trunk.

The Morton Museum was the biggest joke of this trip.  Apparently during WWII, there was a training camp just outside Gainesville, TX.  It seems to be their one claim to fame.  The museum (where they actually charged admission!) was one room in a repurposed antique fire station…with no remnants visible of its former use – that, at least, might have been interesting…where they put a couple of mannequins dressed in WWII era uniforms, a pup tent, some old (not restored) military equipment (broken radios, typewriters, pieces of guns, canteens, MRE packaging, etc), and reproductions of newspaper articles…oh, and a recreated USO scene (with a couple more mannequins in fancy 50s dresses).  I had budgeted an hour for this “museum” but left after less than 10 minutes…their bathroom was clean, so I guess the stop served a purpose.

Next, I headed for a museum in Oklahoma.  Since I had some extra time, I stopped at the OK Welcome center and picked up a map and a couple of rack cards for scrapping purposes.  I had a list of scrapbook stores in the state (about a dozen) and asked the lady at the counter if any of them were within an hour’s drive (since that’s about how much extra time I had); she told me that one of them wasn’t much more than that but, when I called the store, the proprietress said that it was more like 2-2 ½ hours with road construction…she had just driven it last weekend.  The lady at the counter assured me that the Ardmore museum was worth seeing, I chose to take her word for it, and off I went. 

It wasn’t a bad little museum.  This one was free and located in the old Armory.  There were displays of different early 20^th century scenes…an apothecary, an early dentist “office”, a one-room schoolhouse, a dirt-floored cabin…as well as a look at the growth of their Fire Department (Ardmore has burned to the ground twice and risen from the ashes) but the main attraction was a small “house” (three rooms) that had been disassembled and put back together inside the main room of the museum.  Of course, given the building’s origins (armory), there was also a war museum…with photos, uniforms, and soldierly accoutrements (some obviously were reproductions) from every American war (Revolution through Afghanistan).  They had a gift shop but it had very little to do with Oklahoma…there were Texas items, though…that confused me a bit. Of course, as I headed out of the state I sang as much as I could remember (with a lot of dah-de-dah-de-dahs) of the theme from Oklahoma…at the top of my lungs…LOL!  It wasn’t pretty; good thing you weren’t in the car with me!

I was still running ahead of scheduled when I left so I opted to stop at the TX Welcome Center.  Having never entered TX by car, I’d never been to one of their welcome stations.  The lady was very helpful; GW’s Library is so new that there are no rack cards printed yet - she gave me something she had printed off of the internet when I asked about info on the place.  I was still a little ahead of schedule when I left there but that didn’t last long.

On the way to the Frisco Museum, I hit a traffic jam.  What should have taken an hour to travel ended up lasting more than 90 minutes, my time cushion was history, and I was behind schedule.  The Frisco Museum could/should have been awesome…it includes a village, a railroad museum, and a couple of restored old cars. 

Unfortunately for me, someone was getting married there today and most of the exhibits were “closed for a private party”.  I should have known when the attendant answered my comment of “I guess I’ll have to hurry through this since you close in 40 minutes” with “oh, that’s more than enough time today”!  After seeing their prime exhibit (more kinds of salt and pepper shakers than I would have thought had been made in the last century…they filled a dozen - mostly large - display cases and came from some woman’s private collection!) and a collection of very old (but cool!) quilts, I snuck some photos of the exteriors of most of the buildings that I wasn’t allowed to enter and left forty minutes after arriving…right on time.

My next stop was another scrapping store.  I didn’t get much there because I already have almost all of their stamps and they didn’t have any TX-themed paper.

Dinner time!  I stopped at a pub – mainly because they were convenient to my next scheduled stop – and I’m glad I did!  I’ve never had Shepherd’s Pie quite like this…the “gravy” was a red wine based sauce and was amazingly good.

The scrapbook store that followed had absolutely nothing for me.  Not a thing in the store had anything to do with Texas!  I left without spending a penny (a first on this trip!) and with an extra hour and a half in my schedule.  Sure, I could have headed into downtown Dallas and checked into my room by 9:45 so I would be rested tomorrow, but did I?  Nope.

I went back to the first scrapbook store of my week and got more pages cut out for my Texas mini-album.  By the time I drove there, visited with the owner, and drove on to the hotel, it was midnight!  Insane.

My room once again has a full kitchen and a pretty good view.  I’m on the top floor in a corner suite!  It’s not the tallest building around by any stretch, but I’m on the tenth floor and there are pretty lights visible through the two walls of windows.  Time to pass out under the pretty lights...