North Texas Road Trip

 Gainesville, TX

Proof!  Found at the Amtrak station.

A day with no plans

This morning we got up and didn't have any plans for the day so I plotted a course to The Morton Museum of Cooke County and The Santa Fe Depot Museum in Gainesville, TX.  Gainesville is north west of us so we drove up and over picking up 2 new counties.  Cooke County borders Oklahoma so the plan was to drive across the Red River after the museum and pick up Love County OK.

We stopped by the local WinCo to pick up lunch supplies and then headed north on US 75.  Once we got to US 82 we went west to Gainesville.

The Santa Fe Depot Museum

The museum opened at 10am per the website and closed at noon so we got there at about 10:45.  How long could a train station museum take?  We walked into the wrong doors to the real working part of the train station and then backed out and headed over to the museum part.  It wasn't open and there was a number you could call to have someone come and open it up but we decided to just look in the window and then head over to the Museum of Cooke County.

The moose out front should have told you!

Turns out it doesn't take long to explore a closed train station museum.

The Morton Museum of Cooke County

We did the 4 minute drive to the Morton Museum of Cooke County and walked in.  We were immediately greeted by someone inside and were asked to sign a book (a piece of paper) and then given a great breakdown of what is in the museum and how the museum came about.  We learned that the money for the museum originally came from Granville and Gladys Morton, Granville was the founder of the Morton Chip Company in Texas.  It also turns out the story about the Morton Chip Company is interesting too.  I hadn't heard of it so I did some research while writing this and found out that their jingle was sung by The Carpenters in the 70s.  I need to limit the research I do when I write this or the blog would be even more text heavy than it already is.  Long story short, the museum was a small but packed place to learn all about the history of Cooke County TX.  We were fortunate enough to meet the curator at the end of our tour and she was more than happy to go over everything we had heard from the first person that met us but with more details.  Donna mentioned a few things that she liked about the museum and the lady lit up and went into the details of her recently reworking the entire layout of the collection.  We could spend multiple lifetimes just going to County and City museums and never get to them all.

Anyone need 20 grand?  You know where to find me!

Embroidered signatures was a thing at some point.  You can read about it here on the Quilting in America blog.

The Vin Fiz Flyer was built by the Wright Brothers and flew the first transcontinental flight across the US in 1911.  They landed in Cooke County TX.

Gainesville is a Medal of Honor host city.  Deep dive on that here.

The Gainesville Community Circus was a popular armature circus with all performers being from Gainesville 

The historical Frank Buck Zoo still exists.

Gainesville Texas was an early adopter of Barbed Wire 

Oklahoma visit #2 and #3

After soaking up all that Gainesville had to offer we headed north into the Sooner State.  It was a short drive to Love County and the Rest Stop and Oklahoma Welcome Center in Thackerville, OK.  We stopped and walked the picnic area and went into the Welcome Center and got some swag.  It was really nice!

Oak Trees!!!!!

Donna presenting their Teepee style picnic tables

We hope to!  I kind of wanted this shirt.  Maybe I will see it in Tulsa

A home where the buffalo roam

Don't try this at home!  

Some road geekery for you.

After Love County we headed back on US 82 and then north on US 75 to Oklahoma for the 3rd time (our 1st visit was here).  This time it was Bryan, a county called Bryan!  We also stopped at the Texas Welcome Center on the way back in and I took a few shots there.

This was a very successful anti littering campaign.  So successful that we have all heard of it but most of us probably don't know it is simply an anti littering campaign.

We are really far from Riverwalk in San Antonio and won't see the basement in the Alamo on this trip

Our swag collected on this trip that added 4 counties to our tally.

We are at 462 counties out of 3143.  

If you didn't read about our day yesterday, you can catch what everyone is calling, riveting content, here.

The Heard Natural Science Museum

 McKinney, TX

Visiting The Animals of the World, or at least some of them

The Heard

This morning we went to The Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary.  It is a small nature museum, an animal rescue, and a nature preserve all wrapped up into a neat package.  There are a few miles of hiking trails and it has some of the last old native grasslands in the area and attracts birds from all over.  It also has wetlands so there is a good diversity of different habitats for birds. We chose a 2 mile loop that passed through the various habitats and had plenty of shade.  It was a really nice walk and we added 6 new Texas species to our list so we are up to 43.  After the walk we hung out in the airconditioned museum section and saw some fossils, and other wildlife displays.

It was early and we were the first ones through so many of the rescued animals were still out and active

The trails over the wetlands were nice elevated boardwalks

We saw a stashed faun hiding near the boardwalk waiting for its mom to return

We saw a non-venomous water snake

There was an indoor beehive

So many types of bees!

Taxidermy 

I didn't try to touch the globe.  

They had some rocks, minerals, and geodes to look at

And this really nice "stained glass window" made of cut rocks

I even got to stick my head through a thing

The lady working there offered to take our photos and she did a great job showing us and other stuff.  

It was a fun little museum and a nice hike.  I could have hiked around more if it wasn't 101 degrees out.  It's another place we can get into for free with our ASTC pass.  I also wore my special 4th of July outfit!  For the rest of the day we sat in our Airbnb and watched the Teen Titans Go marathon.  Later that evening we had a Zoom meeting with with my sister and brother in law back in Washington.  They are enjoying the cool weather there.  We caught up and started planning our meet up in New Orleans.  We are all looking forward to that in December.

If you missed the post yesterday about Horses and Guinea pigs you can read it here.