We’re Peppers

This weekend me, Madelyn and my sister Cadence (or as I call her, Cady) traveled to the Big D to visit my Grandpa and my Great Grandpa for Fathers Day. Driving to Dallas is always a chore. You can either take I-35, which is bumper to bumper traffic traveling at 60-70 miles an hour. Or you can take the scenic way, which is a lot less stressful, but it takes a little bit longer. We opted for the scenic route so we wouldn’t have to sit in Friday evening traffic. We realized that a crucial mistake in taking the scenic way is to hit the road hungry thinking, "we'll just grab something on the road." Wrong. A word of warning: there is nothing to eat from Austin to Dallas (4 hours or so) on this route. Out of desperation after about 2 hours on the road, we stopped at a local Dairy Queen in Nowhere, Texas, and as I was staring at the menu I decided I would rather starve than eat at this nasty establishment. I have nothing against the DQ, but from what I could see this one was violating at least 100 health codes. We moved on thinking there would have to be something in Hico...the largest city on this “scenic” route. Hico is the supposed birth place of Billy the Kid, and it has the Billy the Kid Museum. We thought that we would at least find a McDonalds. We were wrong. All we found was a sit-down restaurant called the Koffee Kup.

Why do people think it’s cute to change the first letters of the name of their business? Especially when the letters were already the same! There was no need to bring any K's into this…The C already had things under control. For some reason people seem to think that K is a cuter letter than C...and we wonder why children are getting worse at spelling. We decided we would be better off at the convenience store across the street. I ate a bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos, and my sister bought a bag of chips and a jar of yellow Jell-O. The label and my sister claim is was queso, but I wasn’t about to try it. Madelyn was positive that there would be SOMETHING else to eat along the way and refused to eat chips for dinner.

The trip up was interesting and long, but getting to visit the family for the weekend made it all worth it. We went shopping, celebrated my sister’s birthday, and played a family game of poker for chips, not money. For those of you who don’t know I consider myself a pretty good poker player…I’ve watched the games on ESPN, I’ve played in tournaments, and I’ve played in Vegas, but on Saturday night I lost to my 14 year old cousin. Turns out there is some chance in the game!

Sunday we ate some lunch, said our goodbyes, and we headed back home. This time we decided to try our luck with I-35 (which is always a gamble) so that we could finally do something I’ve always wanted to do. We traveled through the construction zone of terror outside of Dallas: 2 lanes, wet roads, semi trucks, downpour, and potholes, not to mention the louge-like feel of the cement walls on either side of our car. Finally, we got to our road-trip destination and stopped in Waco Texas: birth place of Dr. Pepper, and home to the Dr Pepper museum.



The museum was really cool, and we learned all sorts of information about Dr Pepper. We learned how it got its name, that it doesn’t have a period after Dr because of the font, that caffeine was added to it (none of the ingredients are naturally caffeinated) and the recipe has never had prunes (big DP myth). The best part was getting to have some Dr. Pepper made from the soda fountain, and buying all sorts of cool stuff in the gift shop.





We got home in plenty of time to make some dinner and chill out in front of the TV. We had a great time in Dallas, and it was really nice to see everyone. And if the stars align correctly we will be back up there in a week to see The Police!