Flashback Friday - Abilene, TX - Part One!

Hee-Haw! Today we are taking a trip to Abilene, Texas! It just happened to be a resting point for us on our way to Arizona, but this little town sure packs a wallop!
We stayed in a campground with few amenities. Wait, who am I kidding? There were NO amenities except the usual water, electric, and sewer. And if I remember right, the campground owner looked a little frightening, like any minute he'd hop over the counter, knock me down on all fours, tweak my ear and ask me if I could squeal like a pig, while his cross-eyed kid plunked the theme song to Deliverance. Jim reassured me that everything would be okay (how he knew this was beyond me), and we signed our life on the dotted line for  three nights.

I know. We like to live on the edge. Thus the name of this blog.

Unbeknown to us, the campground was situated right on the flightpath for Dyess Air Force Base. The first time those fighter jets came screaming overhead, we both jumped up and ran outside thinking WTF?

Another morning several C-130's took off; barely letting one get off the runway before the next one started down it. This photo shows six in the air, but there could have been more after that.

We went to the Visitor's Center, located in the Frontier Texas! building. Frontier Texas! is a neat experience and is fairly reasonable in price - $8 for adults, $6 for seniors/military. You can experience 100 years of the Texas frontier from 1780 - 1880. You meet some of the actual people (re-enactments) who had lived in that time, through film clips and holograms.

At one point you sit in a theater in the round on seats that turn completely around to get the full effect of the show.

The Town of Abilene offers a "Round-up Pass" for $15. You can see 6 attractions at one low price. We opted for that and actually went to four out of the six attractions in 3 days! (Frontier, Texas! being one of them.)






We went to the Abilene Zoo, and although it was small, it was very nice. It was clean and not crowded at all.

East African Crowned Crane

My favorite animal at the zoo!

Nap time! Can't you see  the "Zzzz's" above his head?

Look at the face on this monkey! Doesn't it look like a mask?

Abilene has 25 sculptures throughout the town, so we picked up a map and made a point of seeing each one of them. I will only show a few of the photos, but click here to see all the sculptures.

This one is called Jacob's Dream and consists of a 32.5-foot bronze sculpture of four angels descending and ascending a ladder between heaven and earth. Surrounding this beautiful sculpture are almost 100 limestone blocks, each etched with the words of scripture. Also at the site is a baptismal pool and a hidden cross/portal that can only be seen from only one vantage point. Jim found the "cross". Do you see it?

Pink Flamingo

 

 

 

 

This next sculpture is called, "Childhood's Great Adventure" and is based on the book "Santa Calls", about three children from Abilene. It was written and illustrated by William Joyce.

The Pig

Bull Skull

We visited the Grace Museum, which actually houses three separate museums inside  - the Art Museum, the History Museum, and the Children's Museum - all for one price. I will talk about the visiting exhibition at the Art Museum in another post.

The first floor is the Art Museum, which has five galleries. This was on one of the walls.

It was an inter-active musical instrument made of wood. Each piece makes a musical sound when pushed, from a horn blowing, to the beating of a drum, to the strumming of a guitar. Jim and I had so much fun with this!

On the second floor is the Childrens Museum. We were the only ones there! This is a large Operations Game.

The third floor housed the History Museum. It had a 1940's boot shop, and period rooms furnished from 1910-1948. It was quite interesting.

I decided to break this up into two posts because there was so much to see in Abilene! So part two will be the next Flashback Friday, September 3rd!

"A" is for Abilene, Animals, Aprons and Art

Our plans were to tour the zoo in the morning, then see what the Grace Museum had to offer in the afternoon. We ate breakfast and got ready to leave. Right then, 8, count them, EIGHT, C-130's took off right over our head, probably heading off for some kind of mission. If we weren't fully awake before that, we surely were by the time the last plane flew over!



The Abilene Zoo is quite small, but still enjoyable. My favorite exhibit was the giraffes, of course, my all time favorite animal. There were two of them and wherever we would walk along the perimeter of their pen, they would follow us, their heads bent curiously watching us. It was advertised in the paper to "feed the giraffes", but I didn't see any evidence of that, or anyone to ask how we could go about doing that. But I suspect that was why the giraffes were watching us so copiously.




Many of the other animals were not in open areas with moats and walls; but in cages with bars so it was not conducive for photos.

The buffaloes happened to be in a nice open area, and there was a large blue heron in there with them. Jim made some kind of call out to the bird and it responded. Then Jim walked away, and the bird began to follow him, just like in the movie Evan Almighty when the animals followed Steve Carell. First the giraffes, then the bird - it was quiet funny!

We finished off the morning at the zoo, grabbed a quick lunch, then tracked down some sculptures.





In the afternoon we went to the Grace Museum. It was constructed in 1909 by Colonel W.L. Beckman and named for his daughter, Grace. It was Abilene's premier hotel for many years, and since it was located right across from the train depot, one of the first sights seen by the passengers. The hotel was remodeled in 1946 and the named was changed to the Drake Hotel. In 1973 the hotel closed when its boiler failed. The Abilene Preservation League purchased the hotel in 1986 in order to preserve it. It was renovated and restored in 1992.




It now has three museums under its one roof. On the first floor is a large ballroom, the beautiful lobby, and three galleries. They have both permanent and rotating exhibits. One of the exhibits was a large display of cut up wooden pieces on a wall. If you pressed a piece it would make a musical sound - from a blast of a horn, to a piano key to drums. It was really cool.



In another gallery was the visiting exhibit, "Apron Chronicles". We entered a large, rectangular room and saw the crissed-crossed clothes lines with aprons from the 1950's, clothes-pinned to the ropes. I immediately started to cry because it reminded me of my mom - she always wore an apron when she baked.

Photographs of the people who had been interviewed for the book were posted on the walls, along with a copy of their interview. They talked about the wonderful memories they had of someone in their life who wore an apron - a mom, grandmother, or a wife. To learn more about this exhibit go to their website: http://www.apronchronicles.com/, or read the book, "Apron Chronicles", Stories collected by EllynAnne Geisel and Photography by Kristina Loggia.

The second floor was divided in half; to the left was another gallery - to the right was the Children's Museum. We quickly perused the museum. It had a lot of fun things to do like play with a large size "Operation" game; an exhibit on poop; an ambulance that you can sit in and pretend to drive, along with a body in the back; and a little theater. Kids could easily have a ball in this place.



The third floor is the History Museum with authentic recreations of kitchens and dining rooms from 1910-1948, representative of life in Abilene, although it looks like it could have represented life in anytown, USA. The kitchen tile in the 1948 kitchen looked awfully familiar to what we originally had in our kitchen back home, when I was growing up! The third floor also features an authentic recreation of a 1940s boot shop, from Albert J. Mallouf, who was a local bootmaker . The shop has some original equipment, handmade tools, samples of many types of leather, even the original cash register used in Mallouf's shop, and Mallouf boots, all set in a working environment of a brick facade and old plank flooring.

This is the most beautiful sculpture that we saw today. It is called "Jacob's Dream". It is located on the Abilene Christian University Campus and was created by Jack Maxwell. Inspired by the biblical account in Genesis 28, the sculpture site consists of a towering 32.5 foot bronze of four angels descending and ascending a ladder between heaven and earth. The sculpture is surrounded by almost 100 massive blocks of limestone, each etched with scripture.