Monday we visited McKinney Falls State Park. It is in an interesting location in Austin. You will be driving through the city and then you make a turn south. Suddenly you are in a secluded 744 acre park. Pay the $5 entry fee and drive to the right towards the lower falls:

That is the view from above the falls. Now these are nothing on the scale of Niagara so don't go there expecting it. My favorite part is this area above the falls. I like to sit in the water right above the falls. The water has carved out little "stream beds" in the limestone. It was hot as hades the day we were there. The water was not cool and refreshing. It was warm. And there was quite a bit of algae in the wider spots of the creek further up that was "polluting" the water. We decided to leave and come back in the fall when the weather had cooled down a bit.

On our way out of the park we stopped for a bio break. Upon exciting the bathrooms I noticed an amazing conglomeration of pholcidae, better known to the general public as daddy long-leg spiders. So of course I had to get a picture for the blog. There were several masses of these spiders on the rock walls outside the bathrooms. My hand will give you some idea of the size of this mass of spiders. Don't worry, no spiders were harmed in the making of this photo and not a single one got on my hand, thank goodness.

A couple more pictures (next time we will visit the upper falls also and I will get some pictures):

Seems like everytime we have out of town visitors we drive the 3.5 hours to take them here:

Yes, it is the place where Pee Wee Herman went to find his bike. But we all know it better as the symbol of Texas independence. From Mexico.

That is my mom in the picture. She has been to the Alamo quite a few times. But her significant other, Sam, had never been. He always meant to go there. And he has seen every movie about the Alamo ever made.

So we visited the Alamo. Then the San Antonio Riverwalk. After that, we drove up the interstate to San Marcos to the Kate Spade store, among others. We had a late lunch at Johnny Rockets.

Then...we drove up to Austin and visited McKinney Falls State Park. Because we like it. I'll write more about that tomorrow. Finally we drove back home. Two tanks of gas used. 14 hours away from the house. I think we drove across a little part of Texas. There is lots more to see but only a limited amount of time.

No one can say New Orleans doesn't have a wry sense of humor:

I saw this ad in the recent copy of Houston Press.

I took this picture while on a day of driving around south central Tennessee last August.

It is an old abandoned house down a country road. It captured my attention because of the shape of the roof line and the two chimneys in the middle. The roof and chimneys actually looked like they were in fairly good shape but the rest of the house had gaping holes and vines growing through the walls. This house looks like it would have belonged to a family of long ago who could afford to build a larger house like this. When you drive around the curve of the road in front of the house, you can see the house from the side and there is another wing jutting off the back.

I always wonder who lived in this house. Who left it to die by itself. And I say die because somehow I think houses that are left alone deteriorate faster because there is no life in them, no one to keep them company.

Today it seems that I am adjusting to the time zone change and the fact that I went from a city of millions yesterday to a town of 20,000 today. It is a bit of a culture change. My mother went home to her town of 3,000 and I can imagine that she is now adjusting to country life again.

Some friends asked how it was to drive in LA. It is actually just like driving in Houston. The freeways are massive and crowded.

The best meal I had in LA was at Bar Pintxo in Santa Monica. We went to visit the 3rd Street Promenade. Unfortunately it rained while we were promenading so we cut that visit short. But the Bar Pintxo was excellent even though I still have not figured out how to pronounce their name. Their food is Spanish tapas and we loved it. All those cute little trays of delicacies arriving at our table every few minutes cheered us up despite the rain.

The best person we met in a service capacity was the front desk clerk at our hotel. He was gracious and kind in a city that can often be overwhelming. I recommend staying at the Culver Hotel so you can experience their great hospitality.

We discovered another restaurant that bears mentioning here: the S & W Country Diner at 9748 Washington Blvd in Culver City. It was a gem of a place that harkens back to the diners of yore. And not in a fake way. This was the real McCoy. Vinyl booths. Good, hearty breakfasts. One of those bars with bar stools that face the area where the waitstaff works.

We took one of those tours of Hollywood. We were busy snapping pictures of the stars on sidewalks and trying to avoid the people dressed up as movie characters. At one point we saw Spiderman, Darth Vader, and that Super Mario character talking to each other on the sidewalk and giving each other tips about the best way to pose for pictures with tourists. While we were strolling along, one of those tour operators offered us a limo ride tour of Hollywood and Beverly Hills and before you could say Paris Hilton, we were off on a tour.

First we passed Bob Barker's house, then we went to a scenic overlook of the Hollywood sign, then we got in a fuss with some dude (it turned out to be a shared limo tour :( ). The dude was sitting at the back where the air-conditioning controls were located and he kept turning the air off. We were sweltering hot! His girlfriend fell asleep or passed out. The three ladies from Wisconsin were strangely quiet. I got carsick and had to ride in the front with the driver. And Toot fell asleep and sleep with her head on my mom's lap and missed the majority of the tour which included Elvis's old house and the Playboy mansion. All in all, that was mostly a waste of money.

Oh, and we visited the La Brea tarpits. That was really cool. But stinky. Toot found some erasers for her collection in the gift shop there.

And that was the trip to LA. Quick.

This is the view from our hotel room in Culver City, California. We had a whirlwind trip out here to San Diego and Los Angeles. Now we are headed back to Texas this morning.

This hotel is located in the western part of Los Angeles and is our usual place to stay when we visit here. I like the neighborhood around the hotel very much. There are great restaurants within easy walking distance of the hotel. This visit we tried Fords Filling Station. It was quite good but really, really loud inside. I will write more about that on my food blog later. Once I get home!

This is a fountain at the Mission of San Juan Capistrano in the town named after it. The mission is located somewhat south of Los Angeles. This is the glorious riot of succulents planted in the pot of the fountain. The mission is beautiful and very old. I was fascinated with the plants that are everywhere. There was a huge variety of trees, succulents, and cacti throughout the grounds of the mission.

Wondering where the Trans World Expedition is now? Why, they have just left Lake Titicaca. (I recall as a child that we thought that name was hilariously funny for some reason.)

This is their picture of Pisac, agricultural terraces. Now the expedition is on to Bolivia. Reading the ongoing adventures of this expedition has opened my eyes to the beautiful cities and towns of South America that I never realized even existed.

You can donate money to help them buy gas as they make their trip around the world this year.

Each day I spend a good deal of time writing. My full-time job, my journal, my blog, and my personal writing all enable me to flex my writing muscles on a daily basis. Sometimes I even stretch a little further and use a website called WritingFix.com. This site gives you random writing prompts to get your creative juices flowing. You never know what they will ask you about. Here is my daily writing prompt that popped up when I went to their site:

"What was up there?  Think of an interesting ceiling you once stared at and thought about.  Write about you staring...and what it was that caused you to stare."

I immediately thought of some of the beautiful churches I have visited in my lifetime. First in my mind is Old Saint Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. It is located on California Street in the heart of Chinatown. It was built in 1854. It survived the earthquake of 1906 but was gutted the next day in the fires that raged through the city. The church interior was rebuilt after that. The interior is beautiful and gothic. The ceiling is high about the pews. I have never taken a picture of the interior although I have attended mass there whenever I happen to be in San Francisco. This is a picture of the interior taken in 1927...it still looks much the same today.

Old Saint Mary's Cathedral website

My daughter made a list of wishes to send to Santa Claus this year. Then when Christmas morning rolled round, she got some of the things on her Santa list. She also got a few things that she didn't ask for. She told me later on Christmas day that Santa always brought her some cool things that she didn't ask for but were just perfect. She said Santa thought of neat presents to bring her that she never even thought of herself.

Santa used to do the same thing for me when I was a kid. I'd get a few things that I never thought to ask for.

One Christmas in particular stands out in my memory. I was about 8 or 9 years old. Two of the things Santa brought me was a little blue suitcase and a guitar. The suitcase was great. I did not have my very own suitcase before that. I wonder if that first of many suitcases I have owned is what fueled my wanderlust for travelling.

The guitar was a mystery to me though. Santa forgot to include a how-to guide or music books. It sat propped in the corner of my room as I grew up. It lived in all my homes that I have occupied as an adult. It was propped against the piano in my livingroom at my house in Wild Peach, Texas. That was the house that burned down completely while we were out of town in winter 2006.

And so that guitar met with a sad end. I never learned to play guitar. But my cousin Micah did. He told me awhile back that the guitar I got that one Christmas so many years ago was what spurred him to learn to play the guitar. He said that every time he was at our house visiting, he picked up my guitar and picked at it. He saved and saved his money as a child until he had enough to buy his own guitar. Then in high school and college he had his own rock band.

He still plays guitar even though his rock band years are long over. It makes me happy to think that my guitar that sat un-used by me, brought some joy to someone else. I think if I had known how much he yearned for a guitar way back in childhood, I would have simply given him that guitar. I feel guilty now for having that guitar and never using it while someone else would have used it and loved it far more than me.