Waco Here We Come.

We have mixed emotions about getting back on the road.  On one hand we are looking forward to what Waco, TX has to offer tourists but on the other hand we are unsettled by our tire problems.  We have confirmed that our total load is within limits and that our load balance across each axle and even each individual tire is also within limits.  But after more hours than I care to think about researching and getting on forums it is clear that the Goodyear Marathons I am running are a tire with a reputation.  And it is not a good reputation.

The number of reported failures of these tires was astounding.  It was not possible to read all the search hits about problems with this tire.  Of the couple hundred I did read the theme was common, tread separation and blowouts under conditions that these problems should not have happened.  One condition that did seem to be an issue in a large number of the failures was hot pavement.  Like me, many of the people experiencing catastrophic blowouts did so while traveling in blistering summer heat.  Several had said they changed their traveling habits to move only at night!  We are not willing to go to that extreme but we are going to start traveling by sunup and be to our next campground by mid-day.  That should have us traveling before the pavement gets untouchably hot plus being a time of day that should something happen it will be daylight and businesses that we would need will be open.

With that said, we are up at 5:00 am and getting configured for travel.  Even with this being the coolest time of day, it is still 83 degrees.  It doesn't sound much like it cooled off during the night but when I got to thinking about it it was almost a 30 degree drop from yesterday's high.

We are pulling out and the sun has not quite come up yet.  Our destination is just over three hours away so we will be getting to our new campground in time to park, get set up and fix lunch.  But our destination park, Flat Creek Farm RV Resort is not our original choice.  We were all set to try out a Corp of Engineers park on Lake Waco.  This campground had received great reviews and we were looking forward to being next to the water for a few days.  But once we figured out what day we would be leaving Livingston we went online to make reservations and discovered that all the campgrounds on Lake Waco were closed due to flooding.  Outside of the COE campgrounds the choices for RV parking got a little sketchy or pricey.  We chose to go pricey and reduced the number of days we would have stayed otherwise.  We would soon learn that the flooding was not limited to the lake area.

It seems that the strategy of driving slow and during the cool part of the day is working.  The move to Waco was uneventful and our little out of the way RV resort is nice.  Although their parking layout is a little odd to us.  The sites are pull-thru but they alternate the direction you are pointed.  The backside of your RV is facing the backside of your neighbor's RV with only a couple of feet between you.  We could literally hear our neighbor sneeze or cough.  But that's okay, we don't plan on being around much except to sleep anyway.

We picked Waco for pure fun.  No chores or things to do like jury duty or going to the tax commissioner.  Our satellite feed gives us the HGTV channel and we have become fans of the show Fixer Upper, which is based in Waco.  The point of the show is to take you through the process of people buying a house that is need of serious repair in the Waco area and then doing a total overhaul on it to make it livable and updated.  But in the course of doing that they show little snippets of sites from around town like the skyline of downtown, the river through town, the sculptures at the historic bridge, and more.  We wanted to see more and we wanted to see it in person so here we are.

First thing is the ALICO (Amicable Life Insurance Company) building which is featured at least a couple of times each show.  It is the tallest building in town at 22 stories and was completed in 1911 on top of a site that was the location of a run-down, three story First National Bank building.

The ALICO building was just as we saw it on TV,
iconic flag starched by a stiff breeze and all.

A big attraction in town is the Brazos River Park and its suspension bridge.  In Texas there are many rivers but it is common that many, if not most, only have water flowing in them when it is raining.  The Brazos is not one of those.  It may get shallow at times of drought but it seems to always have flow.  This year has been anything but a drought for Texas.  Rains have been so abundant that a large portion of the state has been under flood warning for months.  That is pretty much what happened to our first choice campground on Lake Waco.  It finally rained enough that the COE had to cut back on flow into the Brazos to minimize its flooding.  The most recent rains finally pushed the shore line up into the campgrounds.

This shot was captured standing on the old suspension bridge looking
down the swollen Brazos toward Baylor University's McClane Stadium.

The suspension bridge, built in 1870, was a toll bridge.  And in an agreement with its builders and local officials, was a monopoly until 1889.  The only other way across the river was by ferry, and by the stories told it was a bit of a risky endeavor.  From the day the bridge opened it became the de facto crossing point for the Chisholm Trail at 5 cents a head.  The $141,000 it took to build the bridge was paid back quickly and many times over.  In 1889 the bridge was sold to McClennan County and all tolls were removed.

With its 475 foot span, this was Texas' first major
suspension bridge and the longest west of the Mississippi. 

 Roebling Company of Trenton, New Jersey designed the bridge and built the cabling for it.  Roebling later used the Waco Bridge as a prototype for the Brooklyn Bridge.

I was going for an artistic shot of the bridge but got a
bonus of a pair of Black Vultures on top of the far tower.

The bridge was built wide enough for stagecoaches to pass each other or for cattle to go down one side and pedestrians the other.

Modern day Waco has built parks along the river on both sides of the bridge.  But for the duration of our three-day stay, and well before and after, the parks were submerged under flood waters.

The Brazos is running high.

It was a disappointment that we were not able to enjoy the river parks but on the other hand it gives us a reason to go back.

The banks of the river were high and dry, this is where the Chisholm Trail Cattle Drive sculptures reside.  The guy(s) that sculpted this scene did not mess around, everything was about double life-size and there were a lot of them.  I particularly enjoyed one scene where the cowboy was managing a spirited horse all the while herding longhorns to the entrance of the bridge.

Lots of drama going on here.

The Fixer Upper TV show is what prompted us to visit Waco so what stay would be complete without visiting the stars of the show's newly finished restoration of a grain silo operation into a home decor store?  It may be an old grain silo but that does not mean it is out in the middle of some wheat field.  This silo is right downtown alongside an old railroad spur.

Even arriving well before opening time, cars were parked for blocks around.

We had been hearing about how popular a place this was to visit so we planned to arrive at opening time.  It should be cooler (we are still experiencing 100+ degree days) and maybe we will beat the crowds.  Cooler happened, beating the crowds didn't.

We were about sixty or seventy back.  The line behind us wrapped around the block.

By opening time the line to get in was a couple hundred people deep but everybody was relaxed and enjoying some bearable weather.  The best part was when teenagers appeared out of a side building that had been adapted into a kitchen, with large trays of cupcakes.  They started giving them to those of us waiting in line and man oh man were they good.  I had never tasted an icing that was even remotely like what they were dishing out.

Well before Waco was known for its TV personalities it was home to the invention of what was to be a famous soft drink, Dr Pepper.  It was 1885 when a pharmacist by the name of Charles Alderton concocted a carbonated drink at the pharmacy's soda fountain.  It rapidly gained popularity and became too much for the young pharmacist who preferred to focus on his pharmaceutical career.  He sold the formula and "business" to a couple of businessmen.  These two men were serious about growing the business and showcased the drink at the 1904 Worlds Fair, the same year that hot dogs and hamburgers were served on buns.

Dr Pepper museum, Waco, TX

Even though the business of Dr Pepper was moved to Dallas in the early 1900's, Waco is recognized as the home of the concoction and has a museum dedicated to all things Dr Pepper.

Waco is also home to Baylor University.  Even though Cyndee and I are native Texans we were not really well informed about just how much of a school it is.  We drove onto campus and were blown away by its size and beauty.  It was an mix of old and new.  It was amusing for us to see groups of incoming freshmen doing campus tours.  We had flashbacks of our own freshmen orientation forty-some years ago at West Texas State University (now known as West Texas A&M).

Waco is also home to a brand new National Monument.  One year ago to the month of our visit, the National Park Service acquired a paleontological dig on an ancient tributary near today's Brazos River.  This is an important dig as it is the only one in the world where they have a complete nursery of Columbian Mammoths.  Normally the males are solitary and not found in the vicinity of females or calves.  In this dig they are all together plus a camel and a couple other yet identified animals, all from around 67,000 years ago.

Since the dig is of a relatively young time, the bones and tusks of the animals are not fully mineralized.  They are not yet completely a fossil.  In fact the ivory of the tusks has proven very sensitive to environmental conditions and when exposed to moisture and warm temperatures, have literally exploded into small fragments.  To protect the dig, a building has been built to encompass the entire site for the purposes of environmental control of humidity and temperature.

Walkway above Columbian Mammoth dig site.

The Columbian Mammoth is not the same as the Woolly Mammoth that most of us are familiar with.  The Columbians lived in southern climes and were so much bigger that they made other mammoths look petite.

This bull Columbian Mammoth was as much as four feet
 taller at the shoulders than his Woolly Mammoth cousin.  That's fourteen feet!

This about wraps up our three day visit to Waco, TX.  It will be another early morning tomorrow for our short trip, barely two hours, to Highland Village, TX near John's brother's home.