by kenny

We left Austin in the afternoon and headed to a town that I have heard called Dublin, but I have only known this sacred place as Dr Pepper, Texas. Every year this town hosts a week long festival in honor of its bottling plant and the Dr Pepper it produces. The Dr Pepper it produces is unique in all the nation as it is the only plant to use glass bottles and does not use high fructose syrup, only pure sugar cane.

We had difficulty finding a place to camp with the RV, so I called the chamber of commerce. I was told their were some rv parks outside of town, unless we were apart of the Airstream rally! I quickly got in touch with Dillard and Glenda Kelley of "The Heart of Texas Camping Unit" and signed us up for our first Airstream rally.

After we set up camp, Laura's sister Melissa and her two daughters, Melanie (14) and Olivia (just turned 3), met up with us to spend the weekend. They flew from Oregon to Houston and are staying a week with us for summer vacation.

The Wizard of OZ was the theme of the Dr Pepper festival and so there was an outside viewing of the movie and a hot air balloon light show. Unfortunately, both were canceled due to rain. So we took in the craft fair, had some amazing turkey legs and tacos, then headed back to camp for the night.

Saturday morning we headed out to the festivities in all their Dr Pepper/Wizard of OZ splendor. We stopped by one of the best local small town museums I have ever been to, The Dublin Historical Society Museum. Before we got started in the revelry we decided to have something to eat at the Half Penny Diner. It was such a great choice! I had a Dr Pepper Pecan Burger! Wonderful! The rest of the group had non-Dr Pepper-themed entrees. But we each picked a different Dr Pepper-themed dessert. Olivia had Dr Pepper cake, I had a Dr Pepper brownie, Laura had Dr Pepper cheesecake, Melanie had a Dr Pepper ice cream float, and Melissa had Dr Pepper pecan pie. Amazing!

After Happy Birthday was sung to Dr Pepper and the cake was cut we took a free tour of the Dr Pepper bottling plant and the museum. While waiting in line we had our fill of the free Dr Pepper that was made available out of a massive Dr Pepper can. Inside the museum was lots of great Dr Pepper memorabilia as to be expected, but one thing stood out that I had never heard of. The Patriotic Girl of WWII.

Apparently she was too scantily clad for the time and was pulled off the advertising line for indecency. So Pretty Peggy Pepper was created to fill the gap and a girl from the town is selected as Pretty Peggy Pepper every year.



The festivities end and we head back to camp to enjoy a BBQ with the Airstream crew. We spent a few hours there and good food and times were had by all. We met a full timer named Michael J. Depraida, who makes his living as a painter and he gave us a framed print of a Airstream being pulled by a camel in the Cairo desert. It's called "Safari Caravan", which is kind of a play on words. "Safari" is an Airstream trailer model, and Airstreamers often "caravan", or travel together. Clever. We were also invited to be part of an Airstream rally to Burning Man, but at $250 a ticket, we can't afford it. But that is definitely a dream of mine. We met a lot of other great people that are from the area and love to camp in their Airstreams, and they are all beautiful. Ours was the fixer-upper of the bunch, but that didn't seem to matter, as they all wanted a tour of it. I hope this is the first of many more Airstream rallies.