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We were in Houston because we had scheduled an appointment for our RV to receive some much needed attention. We decided to stay in the Northwest section of Houston, not far from our RV repair shop. We found a rather inexpensive room at Crestwood Suites that had a small kitchen and accepted cats. It certainly wasn’t fancy but it worked for our needs.

In the afternoons we took advantage of nearby neighborhood parks and played frisbee and pine cone baseball. Pine cone baseball is a game we discovered many years ago, out of necessity. All you need to play is a bat-sized stick, a pile of pine cones and two people. The pine cones act like wiffleballs, meaning they don’t fly far and can be easily recollected for the next batter.

We take turns pitching and batting and I’ve really improved over the years, although I still tend to chase cones even if they are out of my strike zone. If you try this, and I’m sure you can’t wait, remember that the pitcher needs to turn their head after each pitch. You don’t want to take a pine cone in the face, trust me.

On one of our days off, we explored downtown Houston. Our main reason for going was the Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World traveling exhibit that was at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Our friends Karen and Rich had suggested it to us and we were curious.

The exhibit was put together to honor Franklin’s 300th birthday. “America’s first overachiever” as they call him was born in 1706 but because of the switch in calendars, from the Julian to the Gregorian in 1752, Franklin has two birthdays. Under the old Julian calendar Ben was born on January 6th, but under the current Gregorian calendar Ben’s birth was on the 17th of January.

I can’t imagine how confusing that must have been back then. Ben even comments on the confusion in his autobiography, which I am currently reading. The exhibit was so well done and fascinating that I wanted to learn more. The true measure of an exhibit’s success! It began with Ben’s birth and set the stage by discussing his family and traditional customs of the times. Then you follow along with ever inquisitive, industrious Ben, through his journals and experiments and other accounts. You even get to replicate some of his many experiments.

Even though he could have, and it was entirely the norm back then, Ben refused to patent anything he invented. He felt they should be used for the betterment of society. I guess we could call him the father of open source. Of course, no exhibit of his life would be complete without focusing on his accomplishments as a statesman. The scope of his work and influence are vast, it took us all afternoon to wander the exhibit.

After finishing with Ben’s exhibit we skimmed through the rest of the museum which is also very well done. They had a huge shell collection, which aside from being beautiful taught me a new term: conchology, which is the study of shells. So, I could have been a conchologist, I never knew! For those of you who don’t know Lance, Scott or George you may not get the joke. Suffice it to say that after a week on Grand Cayman with those three doing the Forrest Gump shrimp thing but with conchs, any new conch term is big news.

After being kicked out of the museum at closing time we walked around nearby Hermann Park. The park had a very European feel to it, tables and chairs scattered around the park, a small lake for fishing or boating, concession stands along the pathways, and people from all walks of life participating in various forms of leisure activities. The only downside was the incredibly ugly ducks that lived there, and I’m an animal person, I usually love them all. I mean they were hideous, their feathers were blotchy with different colors and they had random poofs of down all over. They looked like they escaped from a botched radiation experiment!

The park is presided over by a huge statue of Sam Houston on horseback. The statue honors the town’s namesake but the plaque on the statue didn’t rave about him. Instead it referred to him as a “controversial figure”. Talk about arousing my interest! Sam Houston was quite a character full of contradictions.

He was poorly educated yet he became a school teacher. He was adopted by a Cherokee tribe, given a Cherokee name, Colleneh (Raven), and married a Cherokee; yet he was good friends with Andrew Jackson who wished to do away with the “Indian problem”. He held positions of honor in Tennessee: Attorney General, Congressman and Governor of that state and yet he fled the country leaving behind his wife, small child and government position because of an altercation. Incidentally, Francis Scott Key was his lawyer who was unable to get him off the charges of assault. Yep, the same man who wrote the Star Spangled Banner.

He fought for Texas’s independence from Mexico yet he supported annexation by the U.S. He owned slaves yet refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy and therefore lost his job as Governor of Texas. Controversial as he may have been he was twice elected President of the Republic of Texas, in 1845 he was elected as a Texas Senator to the U.S. Congress and in 1859 he was elected Governor of Texas (making him the only man to be Governor of two different states).

Back to Houston, the city. Founded on the banks of Buffalo Bayou and incorporated in 1837, Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest in the U.S. The metro area has a population over 5.5 million. The city is known for it’s oil industry, aeronautics and its shipping channel. Digging of the Houston Ship Channel was begun by the U.S. government after the destruction of nearby Galveston Harbor by the Great Storm in 1900. Completed in 1914 the Port of Houston is the sixth largest in the world.

As you might expect of a city near the coast and intertwined with bayous, Houston’s elevation is low, averaging 50’ above sea level which means it is prone to flooding. This is of particular concern during hurricane season, can you imagine trying to evacuate 5.5 million people? Insane.

Since we were in our hotel for over a week waiting for our “home” to be repaired I ran out of things to read. One night I flipped open the book conveniently left in every hotel room, the Gideon Bible. I didn’t get past the introduction before falling asleep but the intro piece was enlightening. Gideon was founded in 1899 by traveling salesmen who met in Wisconsin and held devotions in their hotel room. They started a group of Christian traveling men and hit upon the idea of placing the Bible in public locations, like hotels.

The group has grown to 175 countries and not only distributes Bibles in hotels but hospitals and military bases too. Ever since hearing about the Gideon’s Bible in the song Rocky Raccoon by The Beatles as a child I kind of wondered about the story, just never looked into it. And now I know…

A day later than expected and with our wallets quite a bit lighter we picked up our home on wheels and moved back into it. No one was more relieved than our cats, they were so thrilled to be back in their domain. That evening we left Houston on our way back to the Gulf Coast.

Photos: View the few, the proud, the three Houston, Texas photos.

Dates: We stayed in Houston, Texas from 12/13/06 to 12/22/06.