Page 5 of 6
Houston, Texas
I sailed a wild, wild sea, climbed up a tall, tall mountain, I met an old, old man beneath a weeping willow tree
I had a free Sunday in SETX (what the locals now say instead of Southeast Texas), and I started it at the surprisingly nice Shangri-la Gardens, a local botanical garden with a huge egret (and other similar shaped but pink bird) colony, filled with nest after nest of birds and fluffy baby birds, none of which are pictured here in this iPhone quality panorama shot.
A week after I was unsuccessful in Houma, Louisiana, I was finally able to get my damn airboat ride a half a state west. On the SETX border in Orange, Texas, I was able to find a semi-reputable airboat company operating out of a canal side interstate highway side trailer park. I wasn't too concerned when they asked me for an emergency phone number contact ("in case, you know, if something happens") or that we were in gator infested waters (there was one hanging around the boat as we boarded) or that the captain actually ran the boat into a bridge (he didn't seem to be all that good of a captain to be honest). I sat back (in the back row to be exact), put on my sunglasses and the provided earplugs and enjoyed the totally out of control ride. Fun.
The boat crossed canals to the Sabine River and then headed into flooded grasslands in Louisiana. We would often stop to look at gators, although for some reason the captain always seemed surprised that the gators would hide under water as we approached. Maybe it had something to do with the giant, crazy loud, disruptive fan that powered our ride. Who knows.
I had a little time to kill between that work trip in Port Arthur and SETX and my scheduled flight out of Houston’s George HW Bush Intercontinental Airport, and I planned on visiting tow places with my available time. The first (pictured below) is the San Jacinto Memorial, which I visited primarily because it was on the way or, more accurately, because it was kind of on the way. The second site that I visited was the Williams Tower way out by the Galleria, which was not even close to being on the way. The tower is also pictured below, but the reason for my visit most certainly is not.
I had twice previously visited the Philip Johnson designed fountains at the Williams Tower near the Galleria in Houston and both previous times the water at the Philip Johnson designed fountains was turned off. Luckily the third time was indeed the charm (whatever that means) and the wait proved worth it. The fountains were, in a word, spectacular.
There's not all that much to see in Odessa, Texas, but that's not stopping me from posting pictures anyway. Not counting the almost endless No Country for Old Men view from my hotel, across the windy (but at least warm) west Texas plains, there are a few things you can see. These include the world’s largest jackrabbit (he was big but not colossus big) and, in a mall by the Express behind a velvet rope, a stone tablet with the Ten Commandments on it, reminding all to keep the sabbath holy by shopping all weekend at the Express.
At the local college in Odessa (The University of Texas of the Permian Basin) there is free culture for all that has nothing to do with giant (but not too big) jackrabbits or observing the sabbath by shopping. There stands an exact replica of the current state of the ruins of Stonehenge, although by exact I mean only 70% of the original's size. Still that's something.
We’re leaving the flat lands of Texas for the flat lands of Ohio, where my city may be gone but that doesn’t matter because Cedar Point lives on. Located in Sandusky, America’s Roller Coast is, by far, the best single amusement park ever built. It is fun roller coaster after fun roller coaster, located out in a peninsula on Lake Erie, with generally edible food and a little theming but not enough to call it a theme park. This visit, I bit the bullet (editors note: I did not in fact bite an actual bullets) and paid the extra money to stay at the Breakers, a confusing hotel on property that allows guests extra time before opening to get in the park. An extra hour may not seem like all that much, but if that extra hour is before all of the hordes of people enter the park, that extra hour becomes pretty important pretty quick.
Comparing Cedar Point and Knoebels is just unfair to Knoebels, so I’ll do my best to avoid comparisons and jus talk about the park as it nothing better exists. So, that said, Knoebels is an amusement park (in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania) and fun, but not nearly fun enough to justify the long, long drive out to the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania.
Since we’re already in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania, lets head north by northeast to Meadville and the Crawford County Fair. I did not plan specifically to go to Meadville to see this, but since I was nearby anyway, why not stop by and grab some elephant ears (not made from real elephants, I checked) and avoid the possibly carnivorous bunny on display.
