Is It Windy In Here or Is It Just Me?

**Disclaimer: I am extremely long winded in this particular blog. If you suffer from narcolepsy, or general drowsiness, I suggest taking this particular posting in small doses. However, if you suffer from insomnia, put on your jammies and go to town! **

Well, it was a wonderful vacation this week! We didn't start out of town until Tuesday because I wanted to weigh in Monday. I already posted about my success last week, so the goal was to cut loose and relax, but not so much that it showed up on the scale. We started out by driving to Cedar Creek (just outside Austin) and gathered up our friend Johnny. Then, we went to a couple of vineyards on Tuesday which was difficult to work in points-wise, but was still a lot of fun. We went to a little vineyard called Driftwood Estates and then the slightly larger Mandola Estates Winery.

Wednesday, we started in Cedar Creek again and headed out to New Braunfels and the Natural Bridge Caverns and Natural Bridge Safari Park. The cave is fun, but the safari park is AWESOMMMMMMMEEE! Did you know that buffalo have purple tongues?? Well when one licks you it's hard not to notice! Also, it's a good thing ostrich don't have teeth because other wise Johnny would be missing a few digits! The variety of wildlife was really astonishing. They were all fairly gentle, but the longhorns and watusi (an African animal that looks kind of like a longhorn) were still rather unnerving when they ate at the car. I'm happy to report that the paint job on the car

suffered no damage!

The cave was very pretty, but the real work came in exiting the darn thing! It was 99% humidity and we were all soaked through our shirts by the time we made it to the top. I was huffing and puffing like the little engine that could, but I made it!

Next, we drove into San Antonio and celebrated St. Patrick's day at the closest thing we could find to Ireland....a pub serving green beer of course! We shared one of the obligitory chartreuse beverages between the three of us and had some pub grub and went to our hotel.

That evening (after a nap to counteract the cave hike and a workout to counteract the good food) we took a riverboat tour through the riverwalk part of the river. There was lots of pretty scenery and even a tree growing right out of a wall! We ate steak to celebrate Johnny's birthday (the big 55!) at Little Rhein Steak House.

The next day we saw all of the silly attractions around the Alamo. We went to the Guinness World Records Museum, the Ripley's haunted house, and the mirror maze (very fun I might add!). We had Thai/Chinese food for lunch. (yes, I put them together.... Even though it sounds wierd, this place did both types of food really well.)

After lunch, Johnny told us that there was this neighborhood

with wild peacocks roaming around in it. He drove us to it and
sure enough, in a shabby little subdivision, there were all of these beautiful birds roaming around. I still had 5 or 6 shots left on my 35mm camera, so I got out of the car and started trying to get close enough to one of the birds to get some good pictures. I followed one big beautiful bird around for maybe 15 minutes as he roamed from yard to yard trying to avoid me. I didn't want to outright scare him, so I was trying to be patient with this avoidance tactics. I finally finished my roll and started walking back to the car. All this time, a man had been watching me walk from house to house trying to take the pictures. As I'm leaving he says, "So, what's up?". I replied, "I'm just admiring these birds! They're really amazing!" He calmly replies, "So, you just trespass and go anywhere you want to? You don't think you have to ask?" I have to admit that I probably looked like a cow chewing my cud at that point because I couldn't get my brain around the fact that he was still smiling at me and being such a jerk simultaneously. Johnny finally spit out a "sorry" and I did the same and off we went back to the car. I'm still baffled that if he really felt like I was trespassing that he waited until I was leaving to be a jerk. Anyway, he was the only part of the vacation I would like to erase.

Then that evening, after having more Mexican food for dinner (I don't believe in too much Mexican food....it's just not possible), we went on the "Ghosts and Legends of San Antonio" Tour. I would like to state here that this particular tour is misnamed.

I would like to hereby offer the corrected name of "Blustery old man who tells any old story that happens to pop into his head". It actually wasn't all bad, but most of the stories were better as campfire storytelling. I like "embellished" history on a ghost tour, so this one was a little less than ideal.

The next morning we got up early, had breakfast and headed back to Johnny's. We got our stuff back in my car and I brought me and Steve back to Houston. Coco couldn't stop wiggling and barking when she saw us.

All in all I would say that it was a pretty awesome week away from it all and it served its purpose of relaxing me. I'll update soon on if the scale at WW likes vacation or not. I'll also try to get all of the pictures on Flickr asap.