On Saturday afternoon I drove to DFW Airport to pick up
laruth and her husband Alastair, who came to Dallas from Canberra, Australia, on the first leg of a USA vacation. A light sprinkle of rain arrived just as their plane did, which was welcome in this heavy drought season. I waited 70 minutes for them to clear immigration, which is a bit long-ish for DFW Airport. A huge group of schoolchildren returning from Australia had to be processed first.
Saturday night we ate Tex Mex food at San Miguel in McKinney. I had the pollo yucatan. Alastair had picked up some premium Absolut vodka at the duty-free shop. I had a small sample. A better vodka tasted much more smooth than my memory of vodka. I perhaps drink 1 to 3 glasses of alcohol every 2 years or so, but it was interesting to sample a bit of finer vodka. Sunday morning
laruth, Alastair and I got on the road just before 8 a.m., driving north. We stopped at the Denison Dam, where fishermen with long poles tried to catch fish in a rather drought-afflicted Red River. Then we went over to Eisenhower State Park,where we hiked a nature trail along which one could see lot of small fossils of prehistoric sea creatures. We spent an hour and fifty minutes on this trail, photographing (and otherwise leaving behind) these great fossils:
Then we drove to Hagerman National Wildlife Reserve. We were driving past its fields of grasses, when a young coyote bounded into view. The coyote saw us and headed into the brush, but we got a nice view of him
as he wandered off.
Sunday afternoon, my wife M.,
laruth, Alastair and I all went to Fair Park in Dallas for a Taste of Dallas. Local restauranteurs had little stands outside an exhibition hall at which samples of their food were very inexpensive. We all managed to eat well without going too far overboard. We braved our local 100 degree heat this weekend and find a lot of fun to be had. The exhibition halls had everything from huckster product presentations to t-shirt makers (Alastair got a custom one lettered) to a cute petting zoo.
I drove
laruth and Alastair to the DFW Airport on Sunday evening, as they headed to a convention they are attending in Las Vegas. laruth has been a livejournal friend for years, since she was just out of uni properly. It was delightful for us to meet she and her husband and find them charming in person. They even left us with parting gifts--a gift bag of neat things from Canberra. We had a great weekend.