Daytripping

Scott's weekend assignment from work... go to Waco and 'pop in' on the crew who is working there. Waco is about an hour north of us, so we decided to make it a daytrip with Dillon & Madison (Jared had to work).

We started out the trip at 11:30 from Round Rock. We stopped at the Burger King on our way out of town which was an extra special treat for 2 reasons:

#1) There aren't very many Burger Kings in our area, so the likelihood of stopping at one is pretty rare when we're looking for fast food.

#2) We haven't gotten fast food (or any restaurant food) in ages! We have been trying to save money and let's face it... I can' think of a better way to spend $5.50 than a burger, fries & medium drink.

We listened to music all the way to Waco which is always fun. We had to compromise a few times between Scott's 80's music, Madison's Christmas music, and Dillon's rap-crap. But all-in-all we sang most of the way there.

We turned onto the road where the work crew was supposed to be. All of the sudden Madison & Dillon scream "FIRE!" and point out their window. I can't see anything, and from their excitement I'm thinking there should be some heavy black smoke but all I see is trees & fields && some sort of factory. Then suddenly there appeared a ball-ish flame in the air at tree level. Oh! It's a methane smokestack thingy that burns off gas! Ah Ha! Neat. So we took a picture.

After driving up & down the road looking for the work crew we gave up on the surprise visit idea & simply called the guys to find out where they were. Lo & behold they said they're at the factory building where the fire was coming from! HA! BUT that' no oridinary factory.... it's a chicken processing plant. Ewww.... what will we see? Will it be stinky? Are there going to be dead chickens laying around the backside? We're soon going to find out.

We approached the guard shack to get onto the grounds of this plant. OMG. Seriously we looked like Chevy Chase & his family from one of the 'Vacation' movies.... picture this: a family in a suburban pulling up to a Chicken Procesing Plant on a Saturday, Scott is wearing a white tank top with the sleeves ripped off, there are Burger King wrappers all over the inside of the truck, and Dillon has his camera ready to take pictures of anything gross we see. I'm busting a gut laughing.

The guy doesn't come out & doesn't come out. So all of us look through the guard house window only to see the guard standing in the bathroom SHAVING HIS HEAD?! He sees us & comes running out the door dressed in an inside-out athletic t-shirt, bits of hair all over his shoulders and a security badge pinned to his inside-out shirt that looks like he got in his happy meal. Did I mention that his shirt was inside-out? I absolutely turned my head out the passenger-side window because I was laughing so hard.

Needless to say we got through security & Scott checked on his crew. We didn't get any pictures because, well honestly, there wasn't much to take pictures of. The grossest thing was the high-pressure water hose on the work truck was covered in chicken fat. Ewwww.... Madison & I decided to commentate on our situation when one of Scott's employees surprised us by opening the Suburban door. Take a look:

We concluded our daytrip to Waco by visiting the Dr Pepper Museum. Did you know that Dr Pepper is made in Waco?

The museum was a bit anti-climactic. It cost $16 for all of us and there was no guided tour. No audio narration to direct us where to walk. It was simply 3 floors of Dr Pepper memoriabilia & early bottling machines with plaques to read along the way. However there was a mechanical wax dude who pretended like he was the originator of Dr Pepper... although his story was interesting, I found myself intrigued more by the wax veins in his hands & the realistic way his hair folicles looked on his balding head. Truthfully, I can't remember much of waht he said at all.

The soda fountain shop at the end of the tour offered HOT Dr Pepper. Madison & I thought we'd try it out. But they were sold out (what?!) so we bought fountain Dr Peppers. Not free. Bought. See what I mean about anti-climactic. Oh well.

The road trip home involved more singing. We stopped in a small town called Salado (pronounced: Saa-laid-o) and went to a place that maked their own beef jerky. We bought Jerky & Summer Sausage. Yum.

Here's something interesting we saw on the way home:The picture is a little blurry because Dillon took it out his window while we were going 70mph, but if you look closely this is a small herd of cows. They are black with one large white stripe around their middles. Madison & I nicknamed them: Panda Cows.