by laura beth

Today Kenny turned 30. I'm not the best at creative birthday ideas, but I made his favorite cake, actually cupcakes, from scratch: yellow butter cake with semi-sweet chocolate ganache, and Nick and I made a feast for dinner: steak, shrimp, salad, yams, and baked potatoes. Sammi Jo is a big prankster, so she provided the after dinner entertainment. She threatened to put horse crap down Nick shirt, went out side, came back in with her hand closed and had him squealing like a girl. He hand was actually empty, but apparently it's not below her to do something like that, and he wasn't going to assume she was kidding.

Also, we decided to stay another week here...

by kenny

Melissa and the girls and Kenny and I caravaned to Willis, Texas to visit my cousin Nick Sheedy and his wife Sammi Jo. After a stop at Woody's Smokehouse BBQ in Centerville (it was average), and a geocache, we arrived at the Sheedy residence and were greeted by Charlie the zebra and Wilson the water buffalo. They also have 4 dogs, 3 horses, and a cat. No kidding.

Sammi Jo has quite a gift for working with animals. She trains dogs, works magic with horses, and bought her first zebra at age 18. After poor luck with her first 2 zebras (from what I understand they are often inbred, which causes defects and premature death), she formed a partnership with Jason Mayfield. So Nick and Sammi Jo moved from rural Eastern Oregon to Willis (40 minutes north of Houston). Sammi Jo went to work for Jason at Bed, Bath, & Biscuit, a high end pet boarding & training facility/resort. On the side, they work together training zebras and other exotics, putting on clinics, events, and will hopefully start breeding zebras. Recently, Sammi Jo urged a Bed, Bath, and Biscuit client to seek the advice of Cesar Milan, The Dog Whisperer. He came to Willis to help with the dog, and then spent time with the zebras. Be sure to browse their site, Zebra Guru. It has some really great photos.



Anyhoo, it was really great to visit with Nick, Sammi Jo, and the animals, but it was extra special for me to spend time with Melissa, Melanie, and Olivia. We mostly hung out around the house, but also spent time with the water buffalo, zebras, and camels. We visited the Sam Houston statue, which is ridiculously large, and ridiculously revered, took of tour of the "Biscuit", and helped Melanie find her first geocahe. We only got to visit with the girls for about 4 four days. It was kind of hard to say goodbye to them, but I'm excited to see them again in Oregon in August!! I love you guys!

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.

by kenny

I have wanted to go to Austin for some time now. Home of Austin City Limits, South by Southwest, and the late great Aramdillo World Headquarters, Austin is well known for it's music scene. But we didn't get to experience any of that. I'm pretty sure that you have to spend more than a day in the city in order to get the feel of the place and learn to love it. Someday I'd like to come back and give it all a fair shake.

We stayed at an RV park in south Austin for 2 nights. We kind of just crashed the first night, weary from the road and thankful for showers and air conditioning. The next morning we set out for Flip Happy Crepes, served up fresh out of an Avion-a silver aluminum travel trailer similar to an Airstream. We shared a chicken, mushroom, caramelized onion, and Gruyere cheese crepe followed by a lemon curd and blueberry crepe for dessert. Yum! Then we set out to find parking and explore the city. It's not usually easy for us to find parking in cities, and Austin was no exception. We heard a rumor that the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum has public parking, but when we arrived we were bombarded by signs warning us that parking was for museum guests only. So to the museum we went. And we were not disappointed. The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum is the only free presidential museum in the country, and it is well-worth visiting. We were more than happy to hang out in the air conditioned museum during the hottest part of the day.





After hanging out with LBJ, we headed to 6th, and Red River streets to check out the scene (which wasn't that happening at 3:00 in the afternoon). We paid 3 bucks to walk through the Museum of the Weird (Shrunken Heads! Freaks of Nature! The Fiji Mermaid! Texas Bigfoot! Mummies! Giant Lizards! Unexplained Phenomena! The Supernatural!). Fun. From there it was on to the Museum of Ephemerata, which was closed for the month of June (boo!), and the Cathedral of Junk, which was open.

We topped off the day with a visit to the Mean Eyed Cat bar. If we lived in Austin, this would be our watering hole. The entire place is one, big tribute to the Man in Black, the beer is cheap, and the live music is good. The only down side is the lack of decent bar food (they were even out of chips and salsa).

After 2 bottles + 2 pitchers, it was time to go home. Actually it was the incoming storm that prompted our swift departure from Mean. The wind kicked up something awful, lightning struck, and the rain came. By the time we got back to the RV park, it was a monsoon. I was drenched to my underwear after less than a minute outside. It was glorious. Austin ended up getting something like 6 inches of rain in 45 minutes. What a great end to the day!

by laura beth

On our quest for the perfect BBQ, we stopped at City Market in Luling. The BBQ is in a enclosed room in the back of the market. You walk into the hot, smoke filled room, order adn pay for you meat, and then go back out into the main restaurant to get beans and drinks and sit at a picnic table to eat. I thought it was pretty good, but BBQ more or less tastes all the same to me. Luling seemed to have quite a bit of charm. They were gearing up for the annual Watermelon Thump and had signs all over town encouraging your votes for each of the three Queen hopefuls: Ravanna, Sephra, and a third girl whose name escapes my memory.



Anyhoo, I love watermelon, and this post had me reading up about them. Along the way I found this site: What About Watermelon, and through that I learned that in Japan, people are experimenting with growing heart-shaped watermelons. You can also get watermelons in cube, pyramid, and face shapes. They are ridiculously expensive (over $100USD) to buy, but the concept of growing them in a transparent mold seems relatively simple. Maybe I'll give it a go someday...In the meantime, here are a few more fun, modified (but not genetically modified) foods:

face, cube, heart, and pyramid shaped watermelons
heart and star shaped cucumbers
heart shaped tangerines
cube shaped eggs