An American Ex-Pat Living And Working In East Asia
In every home I’ve lived in overseas, the plumbing has been a constant challenge. It’s one of those things that, if I’m not careful, Satan can use to push my buttons and turn an average day into a bad day. When coming back to America, I thought I had left that particular pet peeve behind me… I thought wrong!
Sunday while getting ready for church,
We traveled to San Antonio this past week for a much-needed break. This trip came upon us unexpectantly, some friends had a time-share that they were not going to be able to use, it was paid for, and if they didn’t use it, they would lose it. So they asked us if we were interested!
I had never been to San Antonio before, thus, I’ve never been to The Alamo. So for everyone except Erica, this was our first trip to see that very important Texas landmark!
We had some fun at the Ft. Worth Stock Show. The kids loved all the animals and good ‘ol Texas fun!
Red and blue strobes explode in your mirrors. You pull to the side of the road and madly begin fishing through the glove box for your registration and insurance. Then you tear off the seatbelt so you can jam a hand down your pants to locate your wallet. Just trying to be courteous, right? You know, have all your documents ready when The Man strolls up to your window.
Turns out, most cops don’t want you to do anything except rest your hands on top of the steering wheel until directed otherwise.
Didn’t know that, did you? Neither did we.
FIVE BEST THINGS TO DO
1. Pull to the right at the first safe opportunity, then turn off your engine.
If it’s not a safe place to stop, Oregon’s Lt. Gregg Hastings wants you to activate your right-turn signal, then drive slowly to a safer place. “A safer place, by the way, isn’t a considerable distance down a dark side road, driveway, or alley,” he says. “Keep in mind that traffic-related officer deaths jumped 16 percent in 2006,” Hastings adds.
We drove to “The” Bluebonnet festival in Ennis, Texas yesterday.
The website for the festival claimed that this was the only ‘official’ bluebonnet festival and it used alot of language to suggest this was THE place for Texas Bluebonnets.
Ennis was designated by the 1997 State Legislature as the home of the“Official Texas Bluebonnet Trail” and was designated the “Official Bluebonnet City of Texas.”
Remember to stop by the Ennis Visitor Center to pick up your highlighted Bluebonnet Trail Map. The staff and volunteers at the Ennis Visitor Center will highlight the best trails on this map on the day of your visit.
So, we drove down there (about an hour drive from Arlington, TX) with somewhat high expectations. After all, the bluebonnets around here are pretty impressive, so the bluebonnets in the “Official Bluebonnet City” ought to be out of this world!
We did find some bluebonnets in one small section of a park at the beginning of the ‘bluebonnet trail’ and took some photos. We were pretty disappointed by the amount of bluebonnets at the park, but thought we were likely to see some fantastic fields of bluebonnets as we drove along the trail, so we moved on.
However, for the next hour or so, we traveled along the trail and saw almost NO more bluebonnets! It seems the ‘Offical Bluebonnet City’ does not have many bluebonnets this year or our friendly volunteer highlighted the wrong trail(s) when I picked up the trail map!
It worked out okay, we had fun driving in the country (sans bluebonnets), we had a nice picnic outside and everyone stayed relatively happy for the entire outing.
We did see some really beautiful bluebonnets on our drive back home (between Dallas and Arlington) so we did get to enjoy some bluebonnets after all.
Just be warned – if you are going to Ennis for the Bluebonnet Festival – don’t get your hopes up that your going to be seeing very many bluebonnets!
Hi! I'm Steve Webel and this is my blog. Thanks for stopping by!
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