Jake's Journey: December, 2021

Hi, Jake here. I'm the new reporter here at Jake's Journey and, since May, I've been the reporter in training. I think I've finally got the hang of this and hope you enjoy hearing about the things we've been doing.

Mom and Dad have been posting to Facebook for me, but they really haven't been doing a good job and we've learned that many of our friends don't use Facebook. If you have been following us on Facebook, some of this will be a repeat. If not, here's a little of what we've been doing.

We started the month with a campsite on the Mississippi River in
West Memphis, Arkansas. We used this as a home base for touring Memphis.

Mom and Dad toured the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel,
where Martin Luther King was killed.

The museum is built in and behind the former motel with
the outside left as it was in 1968. That's all I got to see of the museum,
but Mom and Dad said that the inside was well done and they'd
recommend it, if you are in the area.

They went to Sun Studio

They toured the Cotton Exchange Museum. The Cotton Exchange was kind of
like a Stock Exchange, but for cotton. They learned about the roll cotton
had in shaping Memphis. It was really big business, back in the day.

They visited Beale Street

Saw ducks in the fountain inside the Peabody Hotel

Saw the light show on the bridge

Visited a really big Bass Pro Shop with a really big bear

It was exhausting.

From Memphis, we drove to Little Rock, Arkansas. Mom and Dad visited the Clinton Presidential Library, but didn't take any photos. We also didn't get a photo of our campsite at Maumelle Park. It was west of Little Rock on the Arkansas River. We recommend it!!

Mom and Dad did get a picture of Central High School in Little Rock,
which was one of the first schools to be integrated after the Brown
vs Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court.

The high school is a big fancy place. It was built in 1927 at a cost of $1.5 million.
At the time, it was the most expensive school building in the US. It has a reflecting
pool out front, Greco-Roman figures over the entrance, 150,000 sq ft of
floor space and included an Auditorium to seat 2,000. It's still in use today,
so they didn't get to go inside. I'm a dog, so I never get to go inside, anywhere 😞

They visited the old Capitol building which is now a museum of Arkansas history.

I got to go to the dog park

Me with some of my new Arkansas friends

We took a hike and saw some cool Cypress trees on the
Kingfisher Trail at Pinnacle Mountain State Park.

Some of these trees are over 500 years old.
I got to go along!!

On December 9, we arrived in Texas.

Our first night, we stayed in a free spot,
next to a pretty lake, outside of Mt Pleasant, TX.

There was a beautiful sunset!

I got to visit Buccee's. If you've driven across Texas, I don't need to
tell you about Buccee's. If you haven't been to one, I can't
explain it to you. You just need to experience it.

We arrived in Fort Worth on December 10 and decorated for Christmas.

We did a lot of visiting with friends and family.
Mom and I riding in the car to visit someone.

One day we met John, one of Dad's friends, and listened to
Christmas music. It was REALLY cold, so there wasn't a big
audience. This is me dancing with Dad. Dad's friend John is
behind Dad. After listening to the music, John and his
wife made dinner for Mom and Dad, at their house.
I had to wait until we got home and then I got dried mystery nuggets.

We had TWO visits with Mom and Dad's friend Meg.
Once we went to her house for lunch and once she came to visit
us at the RV. As you can see, I like Meg!!

My cousin Courtney (Mom and Dad's niece) came to Texas for
Christmas. We went to Dinosaur Valley State Park for a hike. Besides
these cheesy dinosaur statues, there are real dinosaur footprints in the river.

We had 11 adult humans, 2 tiny humans, and 5 fur kids for Christmas Eve. Here is a little of the chaos.

After Christmas, Mom and Dad went to Dallas to visit "the 6th Floor Museum" with cousin Courtney. The 6th Floor Museum is in the Old Texas Book Depository building where Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK in 1963 and chronicles what happened around that day. Mom drove by this building every day for almost 2 years when she worked in downtown Dallas in the 80's, but this is the first time she's visited the building.

On the way home from Dallas, Mom, Dad, and Courtney went to the Fort Worth Stockyards for lunch and a look around.

On December 30, we said good-bye to Ft Worth and drove to Fredericksburg. That night we went to Johnson City to see the light display. We met up with Dad's cousin Nancy and her wife Marie, and my cousin Chris (Dad and Mom's nephew) and his wife Amanda.