Deep in the heart of Texas

Here is what has been happening on my US road trip the last few days and other odds and ends:

    Inside Carlsbad Caverns
    Inside Carlsbad Caverns

  • With today’s daily photo, I have now caught up with my most recent World Heritage site. Carlsbad Caverns was my 106th World Heritage site and it only took 35 days to go from Italy to New Mexico. You can view the complete list of all 106 World Heritage sites I’ve visited with links to all the daily photos corresponding to each location. I hope to do a day trip to the Everglades on Friday and visit three more on the way back to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Mammoth Cave, and Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Illinois.
  • The cruise I’ll be going on next week is sponsored by Princess Cruise Lines. They are picking up the whole tab, so if you think I’ve become a shill for the cruise industry, now you know why. This will not only be the first cruise I’ve ever been on but the first time I’ve ever been on a press trip. Given how I travel, cruising never really appealed to me. If I had to spend my own money, it probably isn’t something I would do on my own. Getting eight hours to visit a port is like having an extended layover in an airport. Nonetheless, I am not anti-cruising and am open-minded enough to give it a try. I’ll try to do a few updates while on board the ship and will be using Twitter during the cruise. You can follow all the Tweets from the cruise at #followmeatsea.
  • Claire at the Botanical Garden
    Claire at the Botanical Garden
    I’ve been staying with my friend Amy in Fort Worth. She has two kids, 3 years and 14 months old. It has been very different being around little kids. Her daughter Claire is adorable and is at that age where she is speaking complete sentences, but still learning how the world works. Luke is walking but not yet talking. He interacts with people by picking stuff up and giving it to them. On Sunday I went with Amy and the kids to the Fort Worth botanical gardens and yesterday we took the kids and her husband James to the Fort Worth Stockyards.
    It has been a nice break from sitting in a car all day.
  • I’ve also had a great time hanging out with my friend, cartoonist Scott Kurtz. Even though a travel blog has nothing to do with drawing a cartoon, there is a lot that I’ve learned from Scott over the years that I’ve incorporated into my blog. Scott normally does a live stream of him drawing his strip every day, and on Monday we took calls from his fans on Skype while he was drawing. We had calls from Germany, Poland, UK, Canada and the US. I think it is important to have friends that are totally outside of what you do, lest you never get a perspective from the outside of the bubble you live in.
  • The winners of the Lonely Planet book, Extreme Cuisine are Bev F, Bob, Jessie, Chaiaket, and Steph. You will be contacted by email.

If you are in the Fort Lauderdale/Miami area and would like to meet during my brief stay at either end of the cruise, contact me and we can try to arrange it.

5 thoughts on “Deep in the heart of Texas”

  1. Wow everyone, it’s Thanksgiving Day! I’m enjoying my extra day off, and I am planning to doing something fun that’ll probably involve a car trip and seeing something new in Wheat Ridge I haven’t seen yet.
    You write something new at Thanksgiving?

  2. I will be in Miami Nov. 11 and 12 — let me know if you will be around then! So glad you got to visit Texas. I’m from Houston and live in Austin. We get a bad rap sometimes, but we are a great state with incredible history!

    That’s great that you’re getting to go on a press trip on a cruise. I’m about to go on my fourth cruise next week. I know it can be touristy and annoying sometimes, though this varies depending on how nice the line is and what the itinerary is. There will always be those types of people. I like cruising because it is so relaxing. On at sea days, I love to read for hours — something I don’t normally get to do. It’s just a nice time to decompress since someone else is taking care of all the other logistics.I hope you enjoy it!

  3. Gary,

    Two questions: Will your cruise take you to Puerto Rico? And what date(s) will you have available in Ft. Lauderdale/Miami? My wife and I have a vacation planned in Puerto Rico, Nov 9-24. If, by some chance, our itineraries or layovers line up, we’d love to take you up on your offer…

  4. Thank you so much. I don’t believe I have ever won anything before. I can’t wait to see the book. Maybe I will be able to identify some of the things I have eaten around the world that were not able to be translated at the time. Love your blog and your pictures.

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