Obfuscator writes: The night of storms in Texarkana continued through the morning. We drove into town to check out some of the sights. Of course, since it was basically pouring on us, we didn't feel it necessary to look too closely. We did stop at the Post Office which straddles the state line, and is quite lovely. In front of it is a little statue to the Confederacy (of course), which was also picturesque, and crosses the state line as well. We drove northeast from there, heading toward Hot Springs National Park. We stopped briefly in Hope, Arkansas to see the first home of President Clinton. It was closed though, since it was a Sunday, and we drove on. Eventually we did get to Hot Springs, which is rather peculiar, really. The National Park surrounds the ... read more

Obfuscator writes: It seemed only appropriate that since we had spent so much time in Florida looking at NASA related things, and our friend J works for NASA, that we see what we could see in Houston. Sometimes you're reminded how lovely it is to have well connected friends. We got up in the morning, and headed in to the Johnson Space Center. Mostly the Johnson Space Center is a lot of offices and labs and so forth, so we didn't take a grand tour or anything. At Kennedy you see all sorts of huge crawlers and rockets and such, because that's where they deal with all the big assembled pieces and shoot them into space. At Johnson they apparently test a lot of the components, but don't generally handle all the fully assembled gear. That's ... read more

Posted by Onaxthiel: I like San Antonio. This was convenient when I was stationed there, as not liking your station is an added pain in a generally unpleasant line of work. Even hanging out for three month's worth of weekends, though, there were sites in town I hadn't seen. When you are walking practically everywhere, some things just don't assume the priorities that others do. This morning Obfuscator and I had planned on seeing the Buckhorn, a landmark saloon and museum that features the world's largest collection of antlers from all manner of species. Back in the 19th century, a new rack to add to their collection earned you a free drink, and rare finds could get you several. Along with the horns, they also assembled collections of all sorts of other assorted kitsch, and have ... read more

Obfuscator writes: We left Dallas right away in the morning, and headed for Waco. Our first stop was the Branch Davidian Compound outside the city. There we observed the site of one of the greatest tragedies in modern America. There, amidst the ruins of the old compound, is a new church for the sect of Branch Davidians that own the land now. There's a grove of trees with one planted for each of the people who died in the compound, and several memorials, including one to the ATF agents who died, and one to the victims of the Oklahoma City Bombing. We walked the ruins a bit, and figured out where the tornado shelter, buried school bus, and other structures were. It was a pretty sad site, even if the surrounding area was rather pretty, so ... read more

Posted by: Onaxthiel: Since I am all strung out on Benadryl this morning, I'm having Obfuscator drive this morning, so that any micro sleeps on my part won't have any critical effects. Yesterday started out in Greenleaf state park, the finest of the OK state parks we have seen on this trip. The facilities are good, with hot showers and reasonably sized and equipped camp sites. The grills and abundance of firewood in the wood line meant that we were able to cook easily without cutting into our carried supply of combustibles. The terrain around the park is lovely, as is the whole of eastern OK, a region dominated by rivers, valleys and bluffs. We wanted to make it back towards OKC in the afternoon, so we had decided to only make one stop for the ... read more