A photographic round-up of the Silver Dollar City Christmas train ride. (as usual, click a pic to enlarge it)
My mom tries to finish off a piece of fudge while the rest of our crew poses. My brother was sober, I assure you.
I cropped the following pictures. Hey, I get to cheat a little while I’m stuck in a train seat, right? I also turned the old storyteller black and white, because the light shining on him made him look like a Smurf.
The next morning, our first day in what some call “Las Vegas without the casinos,” Shannon said there was no way she could walk anywhere, much less on hilly terrain. “Maybe I’ll just stay here while you guys go,” she said.
“No, we’ll figure out something,” I said.
I called Silver Dollar City and found out that they have wheelchairs available, but no guarantee we would get one. I got on the phone to medical supply places and found one to rent, delivered to our front door.
About a half hour before we were to leave, I took Benjamin and his cousin to the local playground. Quickly bored with the equipment, they wrestled, pushing each other against the surrounding iron fence. Less than a minute after they moved a few feet away from it, Benjamin fell backward and his head clanged against the fence.
Crying ensued, as did our departure from the playground. Just inside the condo’s front door, Shannon’s chariot — the rented wheelchair — welcomed us.
I waited to post this because the photos would have given away something Shannon preferred to keep a secret.
How many times does something recur before it is considered tradition? For the third year in a row, my folks planned a winter trip to Branson, Missouri, for fun at Silver Dollar City and other area attractions. We weren’t able to attend the first year, but, as I wrote in my ill-named “Things to Do in Branson When You’re Alive” series, in 2008 we had great fun.
Instead of using the weekend our family celebrates Christmas, this year we used the Thanksgiving break. Unlike last year, this time around we had to keep moving or tuck ourselves into rarely available corners to keep from getting trampled.
Thanksgiving morning at my parents’ house, Shannon awoke with pain in her left ankle, but after undergoing physical therapy for illiotibial band tendinitis, she was determined not to fall farther behind in training for December’s Dallas White Rock Marathon relay. She didn’t want to let down her team, she said.
She decided to walk instead of running, and while hanging out with my family I occasionally caught a glimpse of her bundled form striding valiantly past the driveway on the rural blacktop. At the appointed time, I called her mobile phone to let her know it was time for her to come in. I got no answer. A moment later she again came into view and I called again. She didn’t react.
At least she was getting good use from the second generation iPod Shuffle I bought her from Apple’s refurb department.
“Guess I’ll have to run out there and get her,” I said.
I asked her how her ankle felt. “It hurts a lot,” she said.
Visions of Shannon hobbling around steeply-graded Silver Dollar City danced in my head. Although I had never tried one, I was sure sugar plums would have been better.
We had a great time with visiting family and copious food, and then loaded up in three vehicles for the three-hour drive to Branson. Before anyone asks, we all would be going significantly divergent ways after that, so carpooling didn’t make sense.
“If your ankle hurts that much, then maybe we should go back for Mom and Dad’s wheelchair,” I said about 10 minutes into the drive. “They said we could bring it.”
“No, I don’t want to do that,” Shannon said. She was trying not to focus any more attention on her plight, and hoped that by morning her ankle would feel better.
Instead, it got much worse.
(to be continued)
Since 2005 I have used my blog to share what’s happening in our lives. Four days from when this publishes, I begin the final year of my 30’s. What better time to look back on what my 30’s brought before I started a public journal?
I turned 30 in the dreaded year 2000. By the time my birthday arrived, it was fairly clear that the world was not going to end as a result of the rollover from 1999. It also was fairly clear that Prince’s song “1999″ would never be the same.
We had moved to northwest Arkansas in 1999 so I finally could leave information technology and follow my dream of writing for a living, for exactly half the pay I had been earning. The funniest thing about that was the number of people who asked me, “Is your wife going with you?”
That was only the beginning of a period that can be summed up by that overused word, “change.”
The phrase “I told you so” has become tired from overuse, but sometimes it fits a situation perfectly. Take our Saturday adventure at Plano Balloonfest 2009, for example.
“I don’t want to go outside at Balloonfest,” Benjamin said. “I want to go inside at Balloonfest.”
Usually he would rather play under the open sky than under a roof, so this caught me off guard.
“Well, son, they don’t launch the balloons inside,” I said.
He cranked up to a whine. “I want to see them inside.”
Shannon sighed. Benjamin had been whining earlier in the day, too, and my wife’s vision of finally getting out of the house after being sick all week was dying. In the back of her mind, too, was an invitation to nearby Addison’s Oktoberfest.
“I think once we get there, we’ll all have a good time,” I said.
“I don’t want to go outside at Balloonfest,” Benjamin fussed. Haven’t we covered this already?
“Then we’re not going. Just take us home,” Shannon said.
I wordlessly maintained my original heading, determined that we were going to have fun and we were going to like it. Had my wife been at the wheel, we would have ended up home in record time or tangled in wreckage.
“Okay, but when it all goes wrong, I’m going to say ‘I told you so,’” Shannon said.
I laughed. “That’s fine. I can accept that.”
A small part of me still wishes I never had said that.
(click any image to enlarge)
After I learned early Sunday morning that there was no water running over Pedernales Falls, we instead headed back to Austin’s Sixth Street. There wasn’t much to see in daylight, as odd as that may sound.
Shannon made a photographic project out of the pub and restaurant signs while I tried to capture what little street life was on display. I didn’t aim my camera at a guy sporting a badly bent right leg with pins and a hinged metal contraption attached to it. I figured he hadn’t paid his loan shark in time. Is that even the right word for it anymore?
We also made our first visit to a United States Presidential Library. Sadly, that isn’t a picture of it. That is the Driskill Hotel, built in downtown Austin in 1886. Seeing pictures of the interior online, I wish we had taken a self-guided tour.
Speaking of tours, we saw a guide riding a Segway — leading five or six tourists who also rode the two-wheeled devices. As well as they all rode, I guess it doesn’t take long to learn.
I digress. What was I talking about? Oh yes — America’s Johnson.
After our return from Krause Springs, I sat in the hotel room looking through my pictures while Shannon hit the fitness room for her Saturday run. They actually pumped HD content into our beautiful widescreen television, but navigating the channels was so slow that I gave up and left it on a half-way compelling “Shark Week” episode.
That night we started with a gourmet ethnic dinner — items from Taco Bell’s fresco menu, and then drove out to The Oasis for dessert. The parking reminded me more of a concert venue than a restaurant. There was a guy in a golf cart transporting people from their cars to the building, for tips. As he zinged past us, he gestured for me to park on the side of the road, as all the parking spots were full, and gave me a thumbs up when he saw I was following his suggestion.
Still outside the building, a lady making balloon animals and painting faces took our picture as we posed in the Starship Oasis. It was a neat piece of art that made me think of the movie Explorers (forgot about that one, didn’t you?).
Next we hit the long waiting line to be seated. A tall young woman wearing a nametag and holding a walkie-talkie made her way along the line. My face pointed in her general direction, I said, “So, if we just want to get dessert and watch the sunset, can we just go to the bar?”
“I think so. Hold on.” She said something into her walkie-talkie. Something about a malfunctioning transporter, I think. “Yes, you can get dessert in the bar. To do that, just go up that way,” she pointed to a wide staircase on the right side of the multi-story building.
We followed her directions and the sound of live music. That and the crowd grew louder as we rounded the landing and made the final climb to the top floor, a large, open-air room filled with tables. A band played 70’s and 80’s classic rock tunes, switching lead vocals between three of them. Nobody was dancing, but it wasn’t really that kind of music.
We found a spot between stage left (or is it right?) and the wide opening to the back deck. As soon as we settled, I got up and bumped and twisted my way through strangers to scope out the view. Far below, Lake Travis, lined by tree-covered hills and capped by the open Texas sky, reflected the sun’s golden light. A line of clouds provided good texture and color.
Already the sungazers had gathered, cameras in hand, to watch the spectacle of another day coming to an end. Below us several layers of decks jutted from the building, where diners enjoyed an unobstructed view. Being there reminded me most of a cruise ship. Or, rather, it reminded me of the images I have seen of cruise ships. I snapped a few shots and retreated back to our table.
As we people-watched, Shannon and I noticed a young woman wearing cowboy boots and a skirt, or maybe a dress. We couldn’t quite tell from our view of her. We knew for sure, however, that her knees were far apart and that the middle-aged gentleman a few tables over, his head tilted down slightly, probably was getting an eyeful.
We shared and made short work of a warm chocoloate brownie with vanilla ice cream. Our server ended up comping my cup of decaf, because first he had to find some to brew, and then he couldn’t find any creamer. As a capper, he served it in one of the large plastic beer cups, stacked into another of same to keep my hand from getting too hot. I took the milk he offered and added ice from my icewater to make a subpar cup of iced coffee.
There are just some places one should know better than to order java.
Back outside, we saw vendors including a 20-something man selling carnivorous plants. “Hey, for a funny story, what would be a good vendor to place next to that one?” I asked Shannon. We couldn’t think of any flying insect that someone would sell at such a place, so the idea died.
The Oasis was worth the 20-minute drive.
Up next: we finally hit Sixth Street and hear the voice of an American ex-president.
“Folks used to come here and get married, and they would shove them right off the bluff,” said Richard, a staffer at Krause Springs, on a follow-up interview by phone. He conceded that because of varying water levels, settlers who flocked to the site in the 1880’s faced a much lower jump.
Neither Shannon nor I took a dip in the cold waters. Keeping our destination a surprise would have been ruined by any specific preparations for such a place, so we had no towels, and my water wings were back home. Instead, we stayed dry and hiked back up to the picnic area to eat the sandwiches we had packed that morning, and then explored the gardens.
Just through the backyard gate was a headstone that read: In Memory of Jane Krause. In the 1950’s she and husband, Elton, bought the family hog farm and began converting it into a recreational site to share with others. When off duty from his two jobs as a dairy farmer and a painter, Elton came out to make needed improvements to the site. Many of the structures he built from petrified coral found on the property, Richard said.
Some would say that using an alarm clock while on vacation is absolute insanity. I say take a Texas vacation including outdoor destinations in August, and you might begin to understand.
The subsequent departure toward an unknown destination didn’t faze me, because the rolling hills make every road in the Texas hill country a scenic drive. I got a clue when we turned off the paved road and started seeing signs for Krause Springs.
We passed a camping area, a grassy field dotted with tents overshadowed by large hardwood trees, and parked in a gravel lot near a small house. Outside the van we heard only a slight breeze in the trees and the deep, rich tones of very large wind chimes. A few steps beyond a wrought-iron gate, to our right we saw a butterfly garden and heard the babble of springwater falling down a man-made rock wall.
A gaunt elderly man, shaking slightly with what appeared to be Parkinson’s Disease, stood near the house smiling as a camper thanked him for a wonderful time. The older gentleman guided us to a small table, where a man in his early 30’s and grizzled with a thick, unkempt red beard took our $5 each and had us sign a waiver. Its margins shouted NO DIVING FROM THE BLUFFS.
(click any pic to enlarge)
My bride by my side,
The road long and wide,
I left on a mystery ride.
Friday morning, I was zipping down the road at 70 miles per hour without any idea where I was going, and I liked it. It’s liberating for a dad with a cubicle job to get behind the wheel without knowing his destination.
Shannon had arranged everything for our anniversary weekend — the location, the lodging, and at least one outdoor activity. That was all I knew.
(click any pic to enlarge it)
