Road Trip - Part II

Even though we've been living in Texas for six years (yikes!), I haven't seen much outside of the Austin area. So I was kind of excited to visit Houston despite the negative things I've heard about it. Plus, I enjoy road trips, especially if there are interesting things to see on the way. Mr. Pincushion, on the other hand, is not a big fan of long drives. The expletives usually start as soon as we hit the highway. Mostly, he gripes about the other drivers, almost all of whom are driving too slow, or too fast, or like idiots. In any case, there wasn't much to look at between Austin and Houston, except for some scrawny cows that were probably suffering the effects of our ongoing severe drought.

After going to Methodist Hospital and seeing Dr. Bass, we decided to check in at our hotel and relax by the pool before dinner. Unfortunately, the Crowne Plaza, rated by Expedia as a 3-star hotel, was kind of a dump, with dirt on the bedsheets, a constantly running toilet and broken toilet paper dispensers. I guess for a clean sheets you'd have to upgrade to a 4-star hotel. And so much for relaxing by the pool - the rain let loose soon after we laid out our towels. Wish we could bring some of that rain back to Austin...

The next morning, before heading back, we stopped by the Houston Museum of Natural Science. This turned out to be the highlight of the trip, especially the Cockrell Butterfly Center! The exhibit begins indoors, where they keep a large assortment of butterfly pupa, some with butterflies just starting to emerge. Then we walked out into this huge enclosed tropical paradise, full of interesting plants and a dramatic waterfall. All around us were butterflies of all different sizes and colors, flittering and fluttering about. There must have been a thousand of them. One even landed on Mr. Pincushion's hand and hung out for a while. What a beautiful and serene place! I could have spent all day among the exotic plants, listening to the waterfall and watching the butterflies. Another neat part of the museum was their Gems & Minerals exhibit. The collection included hundreds of rare and spectacular crystallized minerals, as well as an incredible assortment of jewelry, each piece chock full of enormous gemstones.

After a healthy and wholesome lunch at the Mickey D's inside the museum, we were on the road again, back to the triple digit heat of Austin & our dog Lucy!

Butterflies and butterflies-to-be

 

 A short video from the butterfly center.

Mr. Pincushion promised this for my next anniversary...