"Yup, you were in Texas."

Erin was here in Wyoming visiting her folks while we were down visiting her state, Texas. We met the night we got home and she asked, "Well what did you think of Texas?"

I could not tell a lie and replied,"Everything either scratches or bites."

She laughed and said, "Yup, you were in Texas."


I wasn't exaggerating. We only got off the road four times and everything we encountered encouraged us to stay on the highway. For instance look at the thorns on the above plant. Plus this one below.


A...nd on this yucca plant.

I could go on and on and some of you might think I'm exaggerating but according to Erin even a number of the trees have thorns. Not to say that we don't have some of our own prickles like Buffaloberry bushes that look a lot like a Russian Olive tree and produce a red or orange berry that makes a wonderful jelly. Or our prickly wild rose bushes and the cockleburrs but in comparison to Texas, our variety of pokey vegetation is few and it isn't wide spread.

Their cactus alone outnumbers ours ten to one and I'm not just talking size. Wear a good thick soled boot and you can tromp right on over ours. Wouldn't want to try that with theirs. Some of them are piled into tall mounds looking to be waist high.

Their pricklies were just unpleasant but what really weirded me out was that of the three times we left the highway to pick prickly pear cactus fruit, we encountered snake skins at two of the three sites of at least four feet in length.


Once again, Erin confirmed that West Texas has a dense population of them. Obviously!

But, it wasn't until we had crossed into northern New Mexico that I had the fright of my life. I got out of the car to take some pictures of the beautiful landscape east of Raton. With each step I took, I scoured the ground for snakes. When I was about halfway to the fence, I stopped and fiddled with the camera trying to set it. It wasn't cooperating. Once in a while I'd look up at the buck Pronghorn Antelope that stood staring at me. I often have that effect on them.

Something caused me to look at my feet. Six inches from my bare shins poised a rattlesnake. His viper shaped head was reared back ready to strike with the front section of his body forming an S curve. My brain went into hyper drive. I thought of throwing the camera at him but I wasn't coming back for it and I just might miss in my panicked state. My second thought was that he must be calculating the strike range of six to eight inches as that was about how much of his body was raised off the ground. Just maybe, I could outdistance him before he struck. There was no way I was going to be able to hold my ground. I made a mighty jump, running for the car with my feet high stepping the whole way.

My husband looked up from fiddling with the GPS and saw the terror on my face and the speed I was descending upon the car and figured I'd been bit. Normally, I consider myself fairly calm around the slithering nasties. The week before our trip, I'd almost stepped on a large chocolate brown patterned bull snake stretched out in the tall weeds and a quick side step was my only reaction. But at this moment, I felt shear terror.

When I reached the car, I slammed the door shut, first of all on my right leg, and furiously shouted, "Crap! He didn't even rattle." Even more than scared, I was mad! The snake hadn't played the game fairly. He was going to strike without warning. My husband meanwhile was surveying my legs for fang marks thinking he'd have to put the pedal to the metal so to speak and high tail it for the hospital. It had been close - too close and though I had not been physically injured, mentally I was pretty shook up.

We joke all the way to Raton that I might need psychiatric care and you can bet I didn't leave the car until the motel parking lot. The scenery was still pretty though and I snapped a few more pictures while hanging out the car window. Unknown to me, Kirk snapped one of me also.

That night, I only slept a couple hours for when I'd fall asleep, the snake would strike and I'd jerk awake. After the second time, I stayed up and read. Better to immerse myself into a book and be transported to a small town in Ireland at Christmas time, than to experience the shock of a rattlesnake striking again and again.

I'm still shaking days later and sticks gets a thorough scanning, just in case they aren't what they at first appear to be. Spiders aren't faring to well either as I'm stomping on them. I had just finished taking my high powered penicillin for a Hobo spider bite just before the snake incidence. The spider bite left me with seven weeks of headaches, nausea, and blistering oozing sores. I'd had enough and had gone to the clinic for medicine just before our trip. So though I'm usually much kinder to the slithering crawling creatures. Right now, they're on my hit list all but Daddy Long Leg spiders as they are the only predator to the Hobo spider. Sprays are ineffective. So I thank the Lord numerous times a day for sparing me from the rattler and for how easy I got off with the Hobo spider bite.

(50% of Hobo spider bites are dry meaning no venom is extracted.) (20 to 25% of rattlesnake bites are dry; 30% mild amount of venom extracted; 40% full dose extracted.)

P.S. The Hobo spider bite flared up again this morning and started to weep and a several inch in size Wolf Spider that was lurking by our front door isn't anymore.

Houston Street

You can't go to San Antonio, Texas and not go to the Alamo. Especially for John Wayne fans like ourselves. We were blessed to have a private two hour tour given to a group of us by a gentlemen who plays Jim Bowie and another gentlemen who is the historian for the Alamo. As always when you get it from the horses mouth, as the saying goes, a number of misconceptions dissolve. This chapel at the Alamo was missing the distinguishing capanulate or bell shaped facade at the time of the battle. It had no roof until 1850 when the US military added it along with the capanulate. I looked up the original design for the chapel on the internet and another set of columns would have been placed on top of the existing ones and a bell tower would have been placed on ends of the front side.

At this period of time, permanence drove the design of missions. As the nearby settlement grew, so did the mission and the first wooden structure was torn down and a stucco one built. Then when stone structures were under construction for a third, the uprising with Santa Anna occurred. A half finished church and a skirmish worn compound seems a fitting site for the battle for it wouldn't sit right somehow if the church was completed to its grand state and then half destroyed by the grape shot and cannon balls while being defended by a ragtag volunteer army.

We had gotten up early for a walk and to catch the early morning light reflecting off the stones. As no one was around except two of the guards who work shifts guarding the historic site. I engaged him in conversation. He told us some of the building's history and then entertained us with ghost stories. In fact, at two o'clock that morning he had been walking through the library when the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

It wasn't just the Alamo he said that was haunted but several of the hotels nearby. The old medical arts building built in 1924 across the street has been turned into a hotel, the Emily Morgan and it is claimed that ghosts roam its halls. I don't know if it is suppose to be someone or someones from the time it was a medical building or if the ghosts date back to the Alamo period. One of the walls of the Alamo, if still present, would run through the lobby area.

Another haunted hotel is the Gunter, built in 1909. That is where we were having the knife show and the most recent haunt that he knew about was several weeks ago in the Menger, built in 1859. A woman was sleeping and felt she was being straggle. She woke up, turned on the light, and no one was there so she called the police and they found straggle marks on her neck. Got goose bumps? Me neither but it was interesting talking to him.

Above the front door of the Alamo chapel.

The columns of the Alamo Chapel


This is the Emily Morgan Hotel, once the medical arts building, and after looking it up on the internet, I wished I'd brought my binoculars. There are Terra Cotta gargoyles depicting figures with various ailments, toothache etc. somewhere on the building. I missed that but I won't if I go back with Kirk next year. They may mistake me for a peeping Tom but I'm finding those gargoyles.

Since the building is a triangle, did the building or the street come first?


And here is an abandoned building just a block away and it too is a triangle though much skinnier. Note the Spanish roof and detailed carving around the door. My curiosity is itching to know how they laid out the hallways and rooms in a building with this shape.


I can't tell you what was in the shops on the ground floors on Houston street. I think I spent the whole time with my head thrown back gazing skyward as I studied the sides of the buildings.


Can you blame me. You rarely see this kind of ornate architecture.

Souvenir From Texas

I will begin our tale of our trip to San Antonio, Texas with what we brought home. Not a souvenir from a store but a gift from Texas herself.

Unlike Indian Paintbrush, which is Wyoming's state plant, Texas's state plant, the prickly pear cactus, covers their countryside and when I spied them loaded with jelly supplies, I was determined to bring some home.

How would this Wyomingite have a clue about making prickly pear cactus jelly? A friend who was raised in New Mexico introduced me to making the jelly when she brought some of its fruit home from a trip to see her mom who still lives down there. That was fifteen or better years ago and though I have never seen the seed pod perched on top the plant before, not even in pictures, I recognized it right away.

At first I just wanted some pictures and as I cautiously stooped to take some close ups, the idea of making jelly entered. I figured if I was to take home a real souvenir of Texas, this would definitely be it. Best of all, it could be shared.

I discussed my plans with Kirk. He thought it was a good idea and while I snapped some more shots, he went over and grabbed a hold of the pod with one hand and cut it off with his pocket knife. Some of you guessed it. He spent the next twenty miles digging fine haired thorns, that aren't at first visible, from his hand.

But, first he cut open the pod, scooped out some of the juice, tasted it, and declared it delicious.


In the next town, we bought hot dog tongs preparatory for our trip home. We planned our travel time so we'd stay in Junction the first night and head north early in the morning so as to be in the area where we had seen the cactus lining the fences. As long as we didn't trespass, who would care? The pastures were infested with it. If the local residents wanted any, there was more than enough for everyone.

I held the camera to record the event and the plastic sack, while Kirk twisted off the pods.

When we got home, I picked zucchini, some boat sized, along with the green beans. While I canned fifteen pints of beans, I watered the garden, and hung load after load of washed clothes and bedding on the line. Our daughter, Josie, and her girls had stayed most of the week to take care of the animals. I had to laugh when I found a juice box in the bathroom drawer and coasters lined up between the metal frame and the mattress on the spare bed. Who knows what other treasures I'll find around the house when I clean.

As I'm still unpacking, the jelly making will just have to wait until tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.

Father & Daughters Trip

Sorry the posting is late. Okay, not really sorry, just kind of sorry. I don't want to disappoint you but I was having a wonderful time. This is our father and daughters trip that we take once a year and spend three or four days together fishing, horse back riding and piling on as many bodies as we can fit on Dad's four wheeler to explore the alluring dirt two-track roads. Our aging knees and tush get a bit sore but it's our jaws that get a real work out as this slumber party is a chance to discuss politics, livestock, children, exchange recipes and lie. You heard me - lie. My sister, Lana, and I insisted that we were in Mexico and went about the huge ranch to prove it to anyone dumb enough to believe us.


We took pictures of a small Corriente herd of a Mexican breed of cattle that supplied roping calves for the family that manage the tens of thousands of Angus beef that roam this ranch.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
and we snapped shots of the ...

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two burros that are pastured next to the ranch house

along with the ...


wild horses ( okay they're the ranch horses). It's obvious they're too well bred for the scraggly mustangs I'm familiar with. Unfortunately, the barbwire fence does give an air of domestication but I did try to exclude it from the picture. I even stood on the four wheeler but wasn't high enough to shoot over the fence.

What was our older sister doing while we were busy lieing - laughing. She's a lousy liar. Probably comes from being a school marm. Dad said he couldn't believe he'd raised such big fibbers. Yeah! Well, who told us all those whopping fishing and hunting stories when we were a child?

So, why he was caught off guard when he asked,"Let me pay for the groceries. What did they cost?" and I replied,

"Don't worry about it. Groceries are cheap in Mexico."?

There are a few pictures we need to hide until we're ready to fess up to not being in Mexico. This one for instance. It pins us down to being in Wyoming. We grew up in the Big Horn Basin on the other side of the Big Horn Mountains and never knew the county extended this far, interesting.


Now this picture I'm not so sure about since Dad and I are from Wyoming. We could say we were sneaking back across the border, Wyoming border, when we took this picture. And, we were. Only it was from Montana that we had slipped into, not Mexico. My grin that's contorted into a grimace was because concentrating and smiling at the same time was just too much for me. I was trying to figure the angle, like a pool player with a tricky shot, for the camera was in my outstretched hand aiming back at us.



Other photos weren't such a challenge to take. It's hard to make this country look bad.








It was tough but we had to look at this scenery every time we stepped out of our bunkhouse.



Then when we rode horseback or with the four wheeler along the river we had to look at this...


and this ...


and when we got a close up this is what we saw.



One morning, Dad took off with Shane, the rancher, and we grew bored. Bored children get into trouble. We stole Dad's four wheeler. It was his fault, he'd left the keys in it. Now, we don't know anything about running ATV's but, if you leave the three of us alone... We didn't come back for hours. It wasn't long before we began to call Lana, Creamy - as in,"Come look at this Creamy." Only because she was squooshed when we went up or down hills like the cream in an Oreo cookie. Dad eventually came looking for us just like when we were little. He knew in which direction we'd headed and unlike when we were young, we didn't get in trouble, he just grinned from ear to ear at the sight of us smashed together on his four wheeler.

I did say we went fishing but Dad's the only one that caught any fish. My sole fish got away and Lana's fish just nibbled at the grasshopper her big sister, Susan had caught and put on her line. She wouldn't hold a grasshopper but, she wanted to find a rattlesnake to kill herself.

A short distance from the bunkhouse Dad had killed one with a stick the night before. It was so badly beaten it wasn't worth photographing and all but one rattle was missing. Not much good to hang on your board by your desk and I guess a grasshopper wouldn't be as impressive. So the brave girl, who wouldn't handle grasshoppers, held a rock in each hand whenever she left the road so she'd be armed and ready to kill a snake.

We found one dead on the road. It too was missing most of its rattles. It's a dangerous place here in Mexico.

The only thing I've failed to show you is a picture of us on horseback. Susan caught a shot of Bess, my horse, and I coming up the road but, Susan's not available for this blog. So you'll just have to wait and see what a potato looks like on a horse another time.

Thanks for your patience in the delay and I'll be talking to you in a couple days.