the GPS is chicken

I often wonder, as I'm driving along, if a side trip to some roadside attraction is warranted. How much time will it add to the day (to my driving)? Will the site be interesting or boring? A few days ago, I told my passenger that if I ever asked her if we should make a side trip she should say "NO". I don't remember what prompted my saying that and she does not seem to remember the conversation at all. Today, on our way to Midland, TX (home of George Bush), I had planned to make a side trip to San Angelo. I checked the GPS before leaving Austin, and it said the trip would take over 8 hours. The trip directly to Midland was supposed to be 6 hours. My Google information said 3 hours to San Angelo and another 3 to Midland. I decided to just head to Midland. About half way there, there was a sign to San Angelo that said it was only 60 miles away. I asked my passenger what I should do and she said, "I have no opinion". So we went. The first stop was a restaurant that sounded really good. It served lunch until 2:00 and then closed until 6:00. We got there at 3:30. Second stop was the Chicken Farm Art Center. We were greeted by the owner who told us we could walk through any studios and watch the artists work. He bought a chicken farm about 20 years ago and it gradually turned into a place for artists. He is a ceramic artist and we were able to watch a couple of his assistants throw and glaze bowls. There are usually about a dozen other artists working there, but they were all on a trip to China, so their studios were closed. Bad timing. Like the car art. We did see six cats, and one dog and Mara got to pet two cats, a little taste of home. We are at about 50/50 for our side trips. We'd love to hear your opinion on whether we should continue to explore. The entire trip from Austin to Midland only took about 7 hours with the side trip. I think something is up with the GPS.

Chicken Farm Art Center

owner Roger Allen wrapping my bowl

MN State Fair escapee

Mara and two quarreling kitties

We followed this to freshness and replenished our groceries!

Austin Exploring

Mara hammering art
Mara and the creator of the Cathedral of Art

Junk and Mara

This morning we got up, ready to drive to Austin. We drove a couple hours then stopped at the Magnolia cafe. (Recommended by Daphne!) We both had really good sandwiches. Then we took a look at the gift shop next door. Then we drove to the Yard Dog Folk Art gallery. We saw lots of cool art like bottle cap chairs, paper cut outs and wood cut paintings. We stopped at a couple nearby stores, but didn't buy anything. Then we went to Women and Their Work. It is a gallery devoted to art by women in Texas. It was very small and hardly any work in it, but what they had was nice. (A lot of nudity, though.) One of the most interesting things was a wooden shed, with a pile of wood, nails and a hammer sitting by. They invited you to build onto it. I tried to hammer a nail deeper into the wood, since it was sticking out, but it made a great deal of noise, and some people were eyeing me, so I stopped. We looked in the large gift shop for a while, but didn't buy anything. Again. Last, before finding our hotel, we stopped at the Cathedral of Junk. We pulled up in front of the house, which was purple with.... junk all over the front yard and on the roof. I imagined it was a house filled with junk. After taking a few pictures we saw a woman with a camera leaving the yard, and a man standing behind the fence to the yard. He told us that it was closed, but he let us in anyway. We walked through the fence to his backyard where we saw what looked like at first a giant pile of crap. But no. It was a cathedral made out of crap. A structure made only of random things. Road signs, bikes, shopping carts, dolls, CDs, tires, you name it. There were three levels and about five rooms in the entire thing, but we weren't allowed to see anything above the ground level. He told us that the city government said he had to get a permit to have the cathedral. They already made him tear down some of it. He has been working on it for twenty-one years, and it would be a shame to have to take it down. People come to see it from all over the world, hundreds coming each year. We thanked him for letting us in, wished him luck with the government, and went off to our hotel. After relaxing for a bit, we drove to Iron Works BBQ for dinner. All of their pop was in glass bottles, and all of the bottle caps were in buckets around the restaurant. I stole a bunch for my collection at home. (I'm thinking about making a chair out of them....) We were planning on visiting Amy's Ice-Cream for dessert (Also recommended by Daphne!) but we completely forgot. Maybe on our way out of Austin. Tomorrow: Midland! We really enjoy reading your comments, so if you have anything to say, don't hesitate. If you can't figure out how to comment, send us an email. We also like suggestions!

Art! (in Houston)

Drummer boy on top of museum

Giant Jack

Yard Art

Light Art

Car Art, Museum

Today we drove from New Orleans to Houston, Texas. The only reason we planned on coming to Houston in the first place was to visit the Art Car Museum. We couldn't find the exact location on our GPS, so we found a nearby location, and just decided to search for it. It took us a long time, but we finally found it. (Actually, I, Mara, found the metal, artsy building.) We parked our car at the Citco next door, walked up to the fence surrounding it (quite odd...) and saw a sign hung on the fence. Closed for Installation, it read. Wow. Sad. But don't worry, we had other places to visit. First, we visited the Rothko Chapel. When we first entered the room, it looked... boring. It was a room, surrounded by what seemed to be all black canvases, and rows of brown benches. There were people meditating, looking around, sitting. Then, after sitting for a while, you realized how peaceful it was. And, the black paintings, weren't just black. They were navy, brown, purple and red. After sitting for a while, we drove to a museum which claimed to be the Menil Collection. I thought it was the metal collection. And what's a menil? Not a what, a who. We're pretty sure it was someone who gave all the art for the next two museums we were visiting. I guess. (I still have no idea who he is!) The first museum, wasn't the Menil Collection, frankly I have no idea what it was, but it was cool. The first room was large, and almost empty, with windows on the ceiling, revealing the light blue sky, with perfect clouds. Then if you looked out the front doors, it looked like it was night, because they were tinted black. Along the walls were rainbow colored fluorescent lights. In another room were white lights made into designs. Not as interesting. But we stayed in the rainbow room for a long time. Next we visited the real Menil Collection. It was an odd one. At the entrance, there was a drummer boy sitting on the roof, occasionally tapping at his drum. There were a lot of interesting paintings and sculptures, a lot of boring ancient stuff, and the freaky stuff. When we first walked in the building, we didn't see the fake kid sitting up there, so we weren't prepared for what we were about to see. The first thing was a dead horse. It wasn't a painting, it was a sculpture. It wasn't real, but I sure thought it was. It was just lying on the ground with a sign sticking out of it saying some word we didn't understand. I think it meant "glue". After walking through more paintings and mirrors with pictures in them, we came upon a room with dead bodies in it. It looked just like bodies covered in sheets, curled in different positions. They were made out of white marble. There was also arms sticking out from walls, small suited men lying in bed, and cheese that grew hair. The most startling of all was put in the center of an ancient Egypt blah blah blah exhibit. It was a girl hanging from the wall, tied up and stabbed. Very lifelike. Cheery, huh? While we were leaving, I noticed some ditches in the middle of the lawn. They were twisting into different shapes. It was lawn art! After walking in the lawn art for a while, we walked over to the Byzantine Chapel. It was surrounded by a lovely moat and a mini waterfall. On the inside were clear, thick, plexiglass panels and frescos that came over from the ground to the ceiling. Around it were pictures of God, Jesus, and other lord-y stuff. It was pretty, though. All of these museums and chapels were surrounding a park where there were lots of people doing lots of things. People sitting in trees, playing ball, doing yoga and people doing karate like stuff with bendy poles. I really have no idea what that one karate person was doing. We stopped by a book store and visited a giant jack. Then we drove to our Super 8 where I am only allowed to go to the pool after I finish this post. So excuse me, but I must go swim. And visit our past two posts filled with Graceland and New Orleans pictures!

New Orleans Pictures

Art in New Orleans

John T. Scott Sculpture

(The paper sculptures were based on his sculptures)

Yaakov Agam Sculpture

It's a holocaust memorial

That looks different at different angles

Mardi Gras Museum

Costume Design

It plays music.

Dress Designs

Bathrooms with port-a-potty doors

Mardi Gras Costumes

On the Streets of New Orleans

Metal Men

Rainbow!!!! (Ha ha ha ha ha)

Sara near the Mississippi River

Madame Cindy and Nena the Palm readers

Funny cat paintings

Graceland Pictures

Elvis' Navy and Yellow room in the basement
Elvis' pool room with an exotic fabric on the walls

Elvis' award and platinum record collection

Elvis Presley's grave site

Elvis' mansion, Graceland
Me, touching Elvis' Mini-Jet. Monk, Anyone?

Our hotel is right on Bourbon street across from a bar that sounded like it stayed open all night long. I fell asleep to sirens and car horns and woke to screaming women. That was Friday and Saturday should be even better, I think I might have packed some earplugs. Before heading out this morning, we watched the news for the day's forecast. The high was expected to be 95 with a heat index (opposite of wind chill) of 110. Great! We walked to Cafe du Monde for beignets which we enjoyed on the steps over looking the square. From there we went to the Presbytere to see a show about the history of Mardi Gras. We saw lots of very intricate and elaborate costumes and all kinds of other essentials of the day. It was very cool in the building so it was a nice break from the heat outside, but eventually we had to get back out there to see more sites. We toured the French district and went into several shops to check out their wares and to cool off. We walked to Canal Street and then back along the river and saw an amazing Yaacov Agam sculpture designed to remember the Holocaust. There was also a sculpture by John T Scott in the park, so I felt that my trip to NO was complete, at least for the art portion. Next to check off was the food. We headed to the Central Grocery store to get a muffuletta to go. Then we went to Johnny's for a Po'Boy. We sat and ate at Johnny's and took the muffuletta with us back to the hotel for dinner. When we returned to the hotel, we planned to have a refreshing swim, but most of the other guest had the same plan, so we decided to cool off in our room for a while first. Then another big storm passed through and cleared out the streets and the outdoor pool, so once it died down, we headed back to the pool and swam. It was very refreshing with a slight drizzle left over from the storm. In the morning we drive on to Houston and we should get back to free internet, so we'll be able to add some pictures from the last couple days.

All Shook Up

Graceland Day!!! Sorry for the lack of photos, this is being published from.... wait for it.... the business center! At our hotel! We have to pay for internet access so this was much easier, but we can't download our photos to this computer. Anyway, today we visited Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley! First, we toured his mansion, where there were lots of exotic rooms, like the jungle room! An others with bold colors everywhere you turn. We got to see his grave site as well, next to the graves of his family members. We got to see Lisa Marie, his private jet named after his daughter. It was huge, with many couches, chairs and a bed, all with seatbelts. We also got to have a tour of his extensive car collection. The most famous one was his pink car, which was his mother's favorite. You wouldn't believe the number of gift shops and restaurants that they had in the entire tour. We didn't buy very much, but there was much to buy, like a giant Elvis PEZ dispenser. A TCB (Taking Care of Business) walking stick. Twenty thousand dollar replicas of his costumes he wore on stage. I could go on. We wrapped up our tour with the Fashion King exhibit. It was a small room displaying some of his most wild apperall and a funny video explaining some of his fashion habits. Then we drove for seven hours (fun fun fun!) through Mississippi which was difficult. There was lots of rain. And rain. And rain. You could barely see through all this rain. I very stupidly sat down in the grass at a rest stop after the rain. My pants were wet for the rest of the drive. We stopped at a couple of gas stations, where they sold things like boiled peanuts (plain or cajun) and deep fried pork skin which you could get with or without fat attatched. We looked at all of this while eating ice-cream. It was my first time at Baskin Robins, much to my mom's surpise. I got some sherbet and she got some caramel thingy. She noticed that the peanut brittle was called Peanut Brittle when she was a kid, but now it's called Old Fashioned Peanut Brittle. What a surprise! We will add pictures to the post later, probably in two days after we have left our fancy hotel. Tomorrow we have no plans, and we will explore New Orleans!