We got up at 6am (that's 4am for you folks out on the West Coast!) in order to be at the Tyler Chamber of Commerce no later than 8:50am to board some sort of tour bus. As we were driving to downtown Tyler we saw a Wendy's which beckoned us with their sign for a Southern-style biscuits and gravy breakfast.
No breakfast here, stranger. In fact the place doesn't even open until 10am. But across the street we saw a local donut shop, you know, a diabetic's dream.....more beckoning.
Of course I had to go, even though Marianne wasn't too sure. But when she saw they had croissants she was instantly happy. I ordered three glazed donuts, because that's basically all they had, unlike the 20 varieties of sugar and white flour mixtures deep fried in grease offered down the street from us in Oceanside.
Marianne wanted/needed a croissant. So the Thai woman behind the counter. (How did I know she was Thai? Because all Thai store owners have photographs of the Thai royalty plastered on the walls of their stores close to the cash register. Nothing beats the evil eye of a king when it comes to guarding your money. Any way, the woman grabs a croissant from the case next to where my donuts had been peacefully resting just moments before, sticks it in a white paper bag, and jams it into a microwave for 30 seconds. Out comes a croissant with egg and bacon. Amazing? Sure, but I don't want to think about it.
Marianne takes one look at the instant croissant and decides she needs ketchup to spice it up. Sorry, no ketchup, just mustard (sounds like a famous Saturday NIght Life skit: Pepsi, no Coke but delivered by Seinfeld's soup Nazi). Marianne being as resourceful as she is, makes instant ketchup by adding strawberry preserves to the mustard. Who knew?
When she couldn't finish her concoction, after I had inhaled my three donuts, she offered the remnants to me. I just wanted a taste of that instant ketchup. Trust me, it doesn't taste like ketchup at all, but it was pretty good. So, the next time you want to walk, or in this case, taste on the wild side, grab some mustard and strawberry preserves and put it anything you'd normally put ketchup on, and report back to me.
We made it to Tyler Chamber of Commerce about 18 minutes until 9. The place was locked up tighter than a drum, but the sign on the window (and their website) announced that they would open at 9am. And anyway, that tour bus was supposed to be there at 8:50am.
Looking at how desolate Tyler's downtown area was this morning, I had my doubts not only about the bus, but the chamber as well.
8:50am came and went and no bus.
9:00am came and went and no chamber.
Oh for two. My favor. I win. Or I lose. Depends upon how you look at it.
At 9:15am we crossed the street to get into our truck and re-plan our day. With a brochure we got from the rack at the chamber, we were going to find all the exciting sites in Tyler all by ourselves, with assistance from the lady residing inside the GPS who does a pretty good job getting us to where we want to go; but then we need to know where we're going.
A few blocks away was the 1859 Goodman-Legrand Home and Museum a historic Tyler building built by folks before they could waste their time on the Internet. I failed to put its address into the GPS since it was only down the street a bit. But as luck would have it, we drove right by it. Missed it completely.
We sheepishly put the address into the GPS, and she figured out right where it was and led us right there with her voice, graphics, and of course the ding-ding of her bell when it was time to make a turn, now!
We drove into the estate which was now part of a park and right into the middle of a wedding that would be taking place shortly since the preparations were well under way. Remember what I wrote about yesterday and inbreeding? Okay, this may have been an affirmation.
The brochure said this place opens at 9am, but the sign on the door said otherwise - 10am. We shot some photos of the exterior and decided the inside wasn't worth waiting for.
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| 1859 Goodman-Legrand Home and Museum click on collage to enlarge |
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| Tyler Rose Garden click on collage to enlarge |
On the way out of this attraction we were accosted by a lady who wanted to know where we were from, had we signed the guestbook, and would we like our picture taken with a stuffed bear holding up a signs proclaiming our friendship. Well, I guess that's what you're up against when they don't charge an admission fee.
Next she wanted to know if I was a veteran. Since I don't have any tattoos, it was just guess on her part, but then she wanted to know if I was retired. Do I really look that old? The gist of all of this is she wanted us to visit what she considered the world's greatest museum dedicated to veterans. I didn't tell her that just last week I was blown away by the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg.
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| Brookshire's World of Wildlife Museum and Country Store click on collage to enlarge |
What I failed to understand is that if this was really was such a great museum, why was it only open from 10am until 2pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays. But since today was Saturday, I let it go at that. She insisted we had to visit this place, just 11 miles down the road.
And then another five miles further down the road we could eat the best hamburgers ever, called Legends. And she was proud to herald that they have free baked beans there, right next to the salad bar, but that they might not tell us about the beans, so she was doing us a favor. Since it was getting close to lunch and we were running out of places to see in Tyler, we headed 11 miles down the road.
When we'd driven about 20 miles, we realized we'd missed everything, so we turned around. And just where I had flagged down "Git it", was where Legends was. We stopped in ordered a couple of cheeseburgers and an order of their equally famous onion rings. But as the girl behind the counter was ringing up my order she spilled the beans on the beans.
We had a couple of bowls of the beans since the broth was really good, but the beans were just so-so. We waited what appeared to us to be an eternity for our cheeseburgers. We got them and dressed them up with what wasn't a salad bar, but rather the fixin's for the burgers.
In and Out Burgers don't have to worry at all, their burgers are way better. In fact, I didn't even eat my entire ½ pound burger, and that's saying something about either me, or the burger.
After leaving the burger joint although we looked, we never did find that veteran's museum and then wondered whether or not that woman at Brookshire's had a financial or family interest in the burger joint.
But all was not wasted since we passed an Exxon station selling diesel for $3.599, just 4¢ more than my best price ever of a couple of days ago, so I filled up again.
Back at the trailer it was pretty hot on the concrete slabs, so we hunkered down for a bit until the lure of the laundromat became too overbearing. We finally gathered our laundry, hike the 20 steps to the shed that held the two washers and dryers, each of us loaded up our clothes in separate machines, put in $1.50 each. Thirty minutes later we were back to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer and insert another $1.50 each. And thirty minutes after that we had washed and dried clothes.
After all that work, we had to rest for the remainder of the day. Hey, we're on vacation!
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