Sculptures and Snowballs

Day 2 Spring Break Road Trip

Since my mother tried to starve me yesterday, we began the day at Target, stocking up on snacks and new music (Hits from the 70s and Whitney Houston’s Greatest Hits). On our way to Archer City, we sang loudly and car-danced crazily. Archer City is the home of the Booked Up bookstore  – which has four buildings around the square. We bought first editions of some random books (completed item #57 on the Texas Bucket List) at this bookstore owned by Larry McMurtry. We found a stack of ledgers priced at $15,000! We didn’t even touch them!

Windthorst was our next destination. Here we saw a gorgeous Catholic Church and then stopped at Windthorst General Store to get German sausage. I didn’t like it, but the two sisters ate it. 

 

Next was Jacksboro. We had lunch at the Village Kitchen known for its Chicken Fried Steak, onion rings, and chocolate pie. We skipped out on the Chicken Fried Steak, but Aunt T had some of the onions rings, and we shared the chocolate pie. The food was alright, but the pie was delicious. Clarification – my mother did not eat the chocolate pie, even though there were three forks. 

Then we headed to Graham. We drove into the local drive-in and pretended to watch a show. We saw the courthouse and the old post office, which is now a museum, and a cowboy sculpture. Mom found a friendly old guy that proceeded to shoot the breeze for several minutes. Then we decided to find some tree – the National Texan Champion Live Oak. It is on private property in the middle of nowhere, so we were having difficulties finding it. And we had no cell phone signal so we couldn’t look it up for a better address.  Therefore we moved on to the next destination. 

On the way to Woodson, all hell broke lose. I was trying to take a nap, when they roll down the windows and start jamming out to 70s music. There went my nap. Mom decides to save Aunt T from eating too many snacks (Mom was acting like Grandma) and throws her second green snowball out the sunroof. Aunt T slammed on the breaks while crying hysterically. Drama! Another Clarification: It may seem like all we do is eat, but that is not true. We just try several new things, but share.

In Woodson, we searched for the crater caused from being bombed by the Japanese during World War II. Supposedly this happed, but we could not find the crater anywhere. Mom refused to stop and ask the people of Woodson. I am not sure if she was embarrassed that we were crazy tourists or she was afraid that they would have a long-winded conversation like with the guy in Graham. We left with no pictures.

Throckmorton was a little dull, so we just saw the Courthouse and left for Haskell. On 380, we saw a huge longhorn sculpture. Mom and Aunt T got out to take a picture, and Aunt T decided she needed to go to the bathroom and couldn’t hold it until Haskell. So she went on the side of the road. She would have gone in Throckmorton, but I told her never to go to the bathroom at Allsup’s (thanks to my high school basketball teammate Heidi, who said she always thought Allsup’s bathrooms were gross, so she would go to the restroom in the sink rather than the toilet).

Haskell – stopped and looked at the courthouse. This seems to be a repeating pattern; these counties are not as cool as some of the ones down south. Aunt T still can’t let the whole snowball thing go. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. We stopped to get water and some more snowballs for Aunt T (this time we got purple ones).

The next stop was Stamford to see the dinosaur sculptures. It was one scary T-Rex! There was also a haunted building (the Old Stamford Inn), complete with a black cat, and one huge Methodist Church. We saw another cowboy sculpture!

Next was Anson (location of the book No Dancin’ in Anson and some say the inspiration for the movie Footloose). Here we saw a mural in the post office of people dancing and drinking. How ironic.

We trekked to Buffalo Gap to eat at Perini Ranch Steakhouse. A giant armadillo statue aka Barbadilla was there to greet us as we pulled into the off-road location. Mom and Aunt T had the rib eye (completed item #14 on the Texas Bucket List). Aunt T and I finished the meal with the bread pudding. Mom didn’t eat any because she gave up sweets for lent. Great service, the food was good.

  

At the end of each day we talk about our favorite thing (we forgot to do this yesterday). Here are our favorites for today.

Julie: The Dinosaur Sculptures

Theresa: Snowball fight and Longhorn Sculpture

Lynda: Random field of flowers

 Motto of the day: just because you put a cute top over your muffin top, it does not make it a cupcake

Later gaters,

Julie