Texas Walkabout

No, I'm not done talking about Texas yet. After being in the car for 39 hours just to get there and back, I think I'm entitled to a few posts about it. ;)

Eric and Ann live in an incredibly beautiful part of Texas, so Sunday afternoon a few of us decided to go for a little drive around the neighborhood.

This little half-pint oil drill is maybe a quarter mile away, on the corner of some person's sizeable yard (what do you call it when it looks to be several acres? "Yard" just doesn't seem sufficient.).

If there's any question in your mind about how much Texans love their football, this should settle it for you. This is the high school's football field. Get a load of that press box!

This is a little section of historic downtown. Multiply this space by about four and you've got the whole thing! It was tiny!

A few miles out and these are the kinds of roads we were traveling down:

Oh my gosh, so pretty! Have I already mentioned we were thinking of moving here? It's green and lovely and housing is very reasonable. Surprisingly, it was Brian who said no, even though he's been trying to get me to move out of AZ for about a decade now. That's okay though. We have lots and lots of reasons to stay. :)

Anyway, our first stop was the dam. (Our drive there was peppered with a few dam bad jokes, too.)

That bridge is for the railroad tracks, and you can see the river snaking away in the distance. This area seems to mostly be a hotspot for fisherman. They'd fish both off the platform and right along shore. The picture below shows Brian, Ken and Travis watching the fisherman below them pull one fish right after another and plop it into a red bucket. We're pretty sure that was sustenance fishing.

Our next destination was the lake, but along the way we saw something I did not expect:

Yeah, that's a zebra folks. Right in some person's... yard? I had Brian pull right over so I could get plenty of shots of this place. Unfortunately, the gate leading to this property and the trees around the house kept me from getting a good shot of the house. Suffice it to say, it was big and beautiful. On one side was this huge pasture. (Ah ha! Is that the word I want?) That's where the zebra, donkey, and albino horse were. (What are the odds, I ask you?)

On the other side of the long driveway leading to the house, was this:

Oh man. Do you think house prices are reasonable enough that Brian and I could buy this? Wow. I mean, look at this pond. It has a bridge and everything:

But that ain't all folks. Check this out:

Do you see them? Yep. Two camels.

That place was a riot.

And here's the lake. (Why doesn't Brian want to live here?)

BIG step up to that wobbly dock!

Look at that goofy kid behind me... ;)

The shore line near the dock:

And the ride home: