The Odyssey Complete? Not Yet.

 The next day came, ready or not. Again, I did not travel half way across the country to lie around complaining about my back. So after more pain killers and a hot shower, Josh showed up to show us all that Waco has to offer.

Since that didn't take long and we had the rest of the day to kill we decided to visit the home of the one, the only, the original Dr.Pepper.

 As much as I hate this photo of me, I'm including it because Josh and I just don't have any photos of us together. I was in so much pain and I think it shows. But I was very happy to be there.

We spent a good deal of time at the museum of Dr.Pepper and then headed over to Baylor University where their museum has a display of artifacts from the discovery of a woolly mammoth just outside of Waco.








In an outdoor area they had set up a village of how Texas life would have been 150 years ago.
That's where I was able to get this shot of Josh. Standing at the lectern in the front of the church, he looks like he's about to deliver the sermon of a lifetime.

We'd intended on going out to the actual site of the mammoth discovery, but we killed too much time playing around at the museums. So we headed back to the suite and hung out on the patio talking about anything and everything. Three years of catching up, squeezed into two nights and one day. It was so difficult to leave. But we had a mission to accomplish up in Dallas.

 From Waco to Dallas only took a few hours. Probably the shortest distance that we'd traveled the whole trip. We got into town and went right to Stephanie's house before checking into the hotel.  My back was feeling better after the car ride, relaxing as much as I could.  The occasional  ibuprofen*  kept me going the rest of the trip. My doctor here at home tells me that the extended period sitting in the car immobilized and the position  and stretching that I did to get the bags out is what caused the problem. I am happy to report that I am healing nicely. Slowly, but nicely.

We spent the evening with Stephanie, her husband Doug and of course Spencer. Talking like no time had passed at all since we'd last seen them. We made plans to meet the next day.

 They were taking us to get our Texas on at the Fort Worth Stock Yards.

 It was a drizzly day, but that didn't stop us from having a good time. Spencer showed us how to ride a bull.....

 This Long Horn stud was drooling more than Spencer at the Pride parade.

A tribute to Annie Oakley on the streets of Fort Worth.

 Later that day as the sun went down over the city, we met up with a psychic medium for a ghost hunting adventure in the oldest cemetery in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Ed had purchased a full spectrum camera specifically for this night. We stayed well past sun down searching for spirits roaming the grounds. After reviewing the footage from both our standard video and the full spectrum cameras, we didn't find anything more than a few spots like you see here. We would have done a evp (electronic voice phenomenon) session but there was a high school football game going on just a few blocks away. I think the ghost were all scared away with all the raucous. Stephanie got a couple of odd things on her camera. One of them is at the bottom of this post.

When daylight came we found ourselves in downtown Dallas. There is a statue installation of a cattle drive there and Spencer had to show us again, how to ride a long horn bull.

Stephanie was kind enough to do a photo shoot for us in the cemetery downtown. Perhaps in the future when she's had a chance to edit them, I 'll let you see what kind of magic that she does.

For now, this is all you get to see....

 Sunday was the day we were waiting for. Spencer's first Pride! As these Lite beer guys were working the crowd before the parade started, we got them to have their picture taken with our newest member of the gay family.
He was so embarrassed and he will hate me for putting this on the blog.

As promised, here is one of the photos that Stephanie was able to get at the cemetery. A random shot in the dark with no flash 

and a long exposure time and there you have it.....

* Did you know that Ibuprofen was invented by Dr. Stewart Adams in 1962. It hit drug store shelves, the year I graduated High School, 1984.