A Plethora of Wonderful Stamps

Well Day Two of our trip turned out much better than Day One. I ended up with 3 finds out of 8 attempts yesterday and was pretty disappointed that we missed finding that many boxes. Today I was 13 finds out of 17 attempts - much better!

We started the day at about 7:30am at the Abilene Civic Center and ended up not finding the first box of the day, but we remained optimistic. So we headed to Hardin-Simmons University and attempted to find Dance All Night and again came up empty handed but we had a second chance on campus to succeed and that is what we did. We found Dam-It and knew that the rest of the day would be good. So we left the campus and decided to travel about 11 miles north to Fort Phantom Hill to find a Boots Tex box (which are always wonderful, and we weren't disappointed). We stamped in and rehid the box, took some pictures, enjoyed the history of the area and then continued on our way. We continued our journey east and ended up in Baird at the Ross Cemetery. Here we found Texas Fever - another great Boots Tex box. And we learned some interesting history about the Great Western Cattle Trail. Our next stop was in Eastland to visit and pay our respects to Old Rip. After our visit at the County Courthouse we made our way to the Eastland City Cemetery and found another great carve by Boots Tex. The day was just getting better.

At this point we headed in a southeasterly direction as we continued to make our way to Waco (our destination for tonight). We arrived in Stephenville and went to the courthouse to see Moo-la. At this point we learned that Erath County makes $223,000,000.00 annually in milk sales. After seeing the cow in the air and the courthouse we went to the City Park and found Lone Star Quilter's Moo-la box. We enjoyed the box and it was quickly becoming a Boots Tex and Lone Star Quilter day as this made our fourth box by these wonderful letterboxers. At this point we decided we could use some lunch and started looking for something to eat. We ended up at a place called Chi-hua-hua's. Astro D and I made fun of the way it was written and started pronouncing it as it looked with the dashes. It also struck us funny that this was a mexican word but the sign advertised burgers but their slogan was "Y Mucho Mas". Well they did have much more but there wasn't anything resembling mexican food here - it probably had the most American food I have ever had. And we eventually learned that the way we were saying the name was actually correct. All this lead to a very entertaining lunch. Oh, I forgot that the building was painted in green, purple, yellow and pink and it was an old Long John Silver's. Everything about this restaurant seemed disjointed and funny to us - but I have to admit the burgers were incredible.

Okay, now that this entertaining lunch was over we could continue letterboxing. Our next stop was Meridian State Park. Three boxes there - two active - one reported missing - all in the same area of the park. We made our way to Bee Ledge Scenic Overlook. Took some time to enjoy the view of the lake and then looked for the boxes. We found two - Baby Bear's Soaking up Texas and Lone Star Quilter's Chapeau Noir and we didn't find Silver Eagle's Grinch Microbox and I suspect it is missing since the clues are pretty straight forward and we felt we were in the right place. We left the park and headed to Crawford - we thought we might be able to visit the Bush's and find the Tonkawa letterbox. Well, we actually didn't do either. We drove through Crawford and there was not a Bush in sight so we made our way to Tonkawa Falls Park. We climbed down the stairs to the falls, followed the clues and didn't find the box. I was also disappointed in the park. It was a mess! Trash everywhere and it seemed to be falling apart. I am use to visiting Texas parks and finding beautiful areas that are clean and enjoyable - this park was the total opposite. I couldn't wait to leave and go to another location.

In a short while we arrived at Carleen Bright Arboretum in Woodway. Now this is what I have come to expect from Texas parks. A beautiful and relaxing area. We quickly found the Travelin' T's A Day at the Arboretum. There were a couple of other boxes here but they have been retired. So after some pictures we left the arboretum and made our way to Whitehall Park & Cemetery. Here we found four boxes. Whitehall Trail and three of the four Whitehall Journey boxes. I think we were getting tired because we didn't hang around here but once back in the car we decided to try for one last box. We looked at our maps and we seemed to be near a box that we originally thought might be too far away. We did end up finding POPS in the Park to end our day.

Astro D drove us into Waco and to our hotel. Once checked in we went to our rooms to freshen up. After about a 30 minute rest we headed out to find dinner. We ate at Ninfa's - Astro D loves the original Ninfa's in Houston so we thought this was a safe choice for a good meal. And we weren't disappointed, the food was delicious. By the time we arrived back at the hotel Bell Motel had arrived. She will be accompanying us as we make our way to the event this weekend. We all visited for a little while and Bell Motel gave us each a letterboxing shirt - a very nice surprise. I finally said goodnight and went to my room to shower, blog, log in finds and get ready for tomorrow. I had a chance to look through my logbook for the day and was extremely pleased at the beautiful and wonderful stamp images we collected today.