Lisette sequestered herself in the RV overnight and the next morning, aiming to avoid the mosquitoes that hung around the parking spot thanks to the water leaks from the connection to the city water. She also forgot to take her daily morning photo of the view from her back window, oops! While the temperature was comfortable overnight, Lisette was tossing and turning for a couple of hours overnight, unable to fall back asleep, that probably contributed to forgetting. She still plans to compile a montage of all the photos from each morning on this trip, but there will definitely be a handful of days missing.
Wowed by the Waterfall
It was already stinking hot when we left the RV park, and our first stop was Waterwall Park, apparently one of the most photographed spots in the city, and a welcome visit on a hot day like today. It's a huge wall of cascading water, with the talls walls curving around to enclose people within them. A magnificent and cool structure!
The Hobbits in Houston
We headed next to the Hobbit Cafe, which bills itself as Houston's first mead bar, established in 1972. It apparently already was celebrating JRR Tolkien's books from that time, and has an extensive menu of small-batch meals, including burgers, sandwiches, nachos, and smoothies, with names inspired by Tolkien (e.g. Hobbit Chips & Salsa, Fellowship Platter, Aragorn's Avocado Burger). The food looked really good, but it was so hot that all we felt like ordering were smoothies: the Mithril Mix (strawberry, banana and pineapple), and Tropical Pippen (pineapple and coconut). There are a lot of memorabilia from Tolkien's works inside the restaurant, including posters from the Lord of the Rings movies, a statue of Smeagol, and other figurines. While these movies were filmed in New Zealand (boosting the country's tourism), confusingly the restaurant had an Australian flag outside of it instead!?!
Skyspace and Canopies
Next up was heading over to Rice University, a private university that has collaborated with the Space Center for more than 50 years. We learned during our visit to the Space Center yesterday that President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Rice Stadium that the US planned to reach the moon before the end of the 1960s. The university has a really pretty campus, with a beautiful opera house (we don't think we've seen a university with one before!). We wanted to see the Twilight Epiphany Skyspace, which use light and space to alter the viewer’s perception of the sky. There are also 40-minute light shows at sunrise and sunset, and the sculpture has hidden acoustic fixtures that emit music performances. It sounded really cool, but unfortunately it turned out that the area is under construction, so we could only see the roof of Skyspace behind a tall fence! Oh well.
The university's streets are lined with beautiful oak trees, their branches extending all the way out towards the middle of the road, providing a thick canopy for the cars driving beneath them. It was a stunning sight, although we had to be careful not to slam into any branches with our RV!
The Beer Can House
If you've read a few of these posts, you'll know that we love quirky art and constructions, so naturally we had to stop at the Beer Can House, which was created by John Milkovisch starting in 1968, continuing for 18 years. Flattened beer cans hang from the roofs edges, chiming unique musical sounds in the wind, with more cans adorning the fence and the house. It's estimated that over 50,000 cans have been used and recycled to decorate this house. It's open for tours from Wednesday to Sunday from 10am to 4pm, but we were there when it was closed.
Downtown Houston
Similar to when we visited Oklahoma City, downtown Houston also has a network of underground tunnels connecting buildings, to give people some respite against the weather (for us today, it was definitely the heat). The tunnels are very convenient, although they're not as pretty as the ones in Oklahoma, which are color coded and have a lot of artwork and different shops to make the walk more interesting.
We popped back up to ground level to see the lovely Virtuoso sculpture in the Theater District, which shows a man playing classical music for passing pedestrians. Behind him, a trio of abstract musicians play the violin, double bass, and flute. Further along is Preston Avenue Bridge, a pretty walk over the water where we could view some striking buildings along the way. By this stage though, we'd had it with the heat (a consistent theme these days), and headed back to the RV.
David Adickes' Sculptures
We'd visited Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, and it turns out that Houston has its own version, called the American Statesmanship Park, which features the busts of US presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, as well as Stephen F. Austin (former Texas Secretary of State), and Sam Houston (General and former President of the Republic of Texas). It's a small park and we tried to visit it, but the streets were tough to navigate in our RV and the neighborhood looked a bit rough. It's best viewed along the highway it faces, but we went on an overpass above it and could just make out a couple of the 5.4 meter (18 foot) statues' heads sticking out.
Fortunately, we didn't completely miss out on seeing such sculptures, as the artist, David Adickes, has a studio where we could see more of the giant heads of famous figures such as US President Theodore Roosevelt, and many others. While the studio had a wire fence around it, we could get right up to the fence to check out the heads. David is almost 100 years-old (!) and still making art, and each statue is very impressive as he captures their features in great detail. The studio is however near a homeless encampment and railway tracks, so it's not in the best part of town, but it's fine for a brief daytime stop.
More Quirky Sculptures in Parks
We crossed over the railway tracks once a immensely long train had clattered past, attempting to visit the Eclectic Menagerie Park, which has numerous metal sculptures by various local and famous artists. As we approached, we were excited to check these out further--we could see a metal sculpture of a spider, dinosaur, bird and other creatures scattered around the park. Unfortunately, it's also facing the highway and there was absolutely nowhere for us to park in our RV. It's possible to stop along the side of the road, on the embankment in a car, but impossible for us in our vehicle. So the memory of us passing by and what we saw with our two eyes will forever be imprinted in our memories, rather than via our phones!
Luckily, we could stop at Smithers Park, Houston's first art-inspired green space, which was built by over 300 artists. Here, there's extensive and intricate mosaic artwork throughout the entire park--such as along the walls, above the swings, on the floor, on the table and chairs, on unique statues, and more. We absolutely loved it! It's hard to believe in a way that there were so many artists involved, because even though there's so many mosaics that depict different patterns or pictures, these eclectic collections all come together in harmony.
Next door to Smithers Park (which is free and open from sunrise to sunset), is the Orange Show Monument, built by a retired mail carrier named Jeff Davis McKissack. The monument, which is on the National Register for Historic Places, was closed for restoration when we were there, but we could see from the outside the intricate tiles, fencing, seats that make it seem almost like a circus venue.
What was cool was that while there are two incredible art spaces within one block, the houses along this residential street have also embraced the artwork, with quite a few homes displaying mosaics or sculptures of some kind on their front lawns. Perhaps some of the artists live on this street, or have designed and given their art to the residents?
Our First Buc-ee's Experience!
Last year, we'd heard about Buc-ee's from friends of ours in Florida. When we asked them what it was, they struggled a bit to articulate it precisely--saying it was a gas station, store, restaurant, incredible restroom stop... literally, everything in one.
So when we finally visited Buc-ee's for the first time, we realized why it was difficult to describe. It literally is EVERYTHING. It's a massive complex--driving in, we already saw what seemed like dozens of gas station pumps lined up for what seemed like half a mile. Then there was a separate parking lot just go to the store.
When we went into the store, it was huge in itself. Walls of Buc-ee's merchandise, including branded kids' clothes (even swimsuits!), t-shirts, hats, stuffed toys, and more. A wall of Buc-ee's jerky in about a dozen different flavors. Food stations pumping out BBQ sandwiches, fried chicken sandwiches, and other hot meals. Walls of drinks from floor to ceiling. Snacks to satisfy every sweet or savory tooth. And huge bathrooms, like what you'd expect going to a concert.
We still had a long drive ahead of us, so we got a couple of BBQ brisket sandwiches for dinner, appreciating that we could see them chopping up the meat and adding the sauce fresh onsite. Yes, Lisette doesn't eat meat in general, but has been more flexible on this trip, making a few exceptions. So maybe she's averaging one meat meal a month or so at this stage. The sandwich was delicious, hot and freshly made, so we were both happy with our purchase, especially as this was our last chance to have Texan BBQ!
State #21: Louisiana!
Buc-ee's was our last stop in Texas, and we undertook the long drive across the border to Louisiana, arriving at the town of Vinton, with a population of about 3,400 that calls itself the "Gateway to Cajun Country." We arrived just after 8pm and were met by the lady running the office with her grandson after hours in their golf cart. We got a spot closer to where we entered, and right across from the pool--yay!
After quickly setting up for the evening, we went to the pool, where the manager and her grandson were enjoying a swim. The grandson, who was 7 years-old, was incredibly excited to have some new friends to teach multiple swimming tricks to, and Lisette mostly played games with him until it was late into the night and time for bed. We found out that laundry is free at this RV park, so we'll be doing this first thing tomorrow morning!
Route Map
