Vacation day 3....Dublin Dr. Pepper Plant

On Friday, we drove to Dublin to the oldest Dr Pepper bottling plant. While we were there, we visited Doc's Soda shop and went on a tour to see the equipment used to bottle the origional recipe of DP using pure cane sugar instead of corn syrup. We were also treated to a nice cold Dr Pepper while on the tour.

There was a very impressive collection of old signs and memorbila from the company like the sign above.

This is part of the machine used in the bottling process. Can you see the red marker on the right hand side of the picture? We were asked to guess what its function was. After a few tries and no one in our group guessing right, the girl leading us told us that it is their dating system. How simple and amazing that this is still their method. The color of the marker is changed 4 times a year, and that is how they know when the product was made.

Here, the bottles have been filled with syrup and carbonation, and are going into these four slots for a 3 step rotation to be mixed. After they have been mixed, the ingredients will never seperate.


I don't remember what step this is.

AA check station to be sure their aren't any visible cracks in the bottles before they are capped.

This is a diagram on the side of the part of the equipment that sterilizes the bottles before they are filled.

Where the bottles are loaded. They have these huge tongs that pick up ten bottles at a time to load them on the conveyer belts.

Bottles being stored waiting to be filled.

Finished product on a lamp to check for color/fill quality. The 3rd bottle from the left is the correct bottle.

The pictures obviously are not in the correct order. But it was very interesting to see how my favorite drink is bottled.

All the products bottle in Dublin.

Vacation day 2 continued....Dinosaur Valley State Park

The kids on the trail down to the river bed where the Dinosaur tracks were.

A track at the edge of the river

Tracks where they beleive at least 2 dinosaurs walked through....the theory is that one was trying to escape the other.


Diagrams of when there was to believed to be water covering the state of Texas

North American Land Masses

The kids with the dino believed to be running from the preditor

The preditor...a T-Rex

Kiddos sitting on the tail of the Paluxysaurus

Vacation Day 2...Fossil Rim

On Thursday, we headed over to Glen Rose to Fossil Rim to checkout some wild life. It is a 9 1/2 mile drive through lots of exotic animals. The kids loved it as did Jacob and I. They gave you a brochure with all the animals you might see, so as we went along, I drove and Jacob told us what everything was and marked it off our list. We also got a bag of food so we could lure the animals closer to the car to get a good look....and let me tell you, we got up close and personal with a few :) Dinosaurs at the entrance

a baby Zebra, there were LOTS of zebras

some kind of deer also LOTS of these

he wasn't too interested in visitors

Even the animals thought it was hot, check out his tongue stuck out.

We raised the back glass in the expedition and this is where the kids rode in between herds of animals.

This guy cracked me up, at one time his head was in the car between me and the steering wheel.

Jacob LOVED all the bid deer, (I think he was imagining hunting them).

The 1/2 point from the trail

Looking out from the 1/2 point. There was a really neat gift shop and restraunt up there.

Giraffe...if you look really close you can see his tongue picking leaves off the tree.

technically, the giraffes were the only animal you were supposed to be able to feed by hand, but none of them would come up to the cars. Still Beautiful.

Colton and a zebra

Me and a zebra. These were the friendliest animals.

The picture doesn't do justice, but his spots were REALLY dark, very different from the rest of the giraffes.

the bully

a cave, right around the corner the road went right over the cave.

rhino

Ostrich....a.k.a. Jacob's favorite....NOT. He was hillarious to watch :)

and finally a buffalo. We didn't see him until we were out on the road to leave.

After we left Fossil Rim, we went down the road to the Dinosaur Valley State Park (lots of dinosaur things to do out there). I'll have to make another post for that one.

A few more pics from the first day

You can't see it very well, but this is a picture of the film reel for the omni theatre. I still haven't made up my mind about the omni, I do know if I ever get to go to another one, I will try my best to sit right in the middle verses the side.

The kids with a T-Rex outside the museum

There was a huge Leonardo DiVince (sp) display set up, and this glider was hanging in the foyer of the museum, I assume that it went along with all his other amazing inventions.

We didn't visit the Cowgirl Hall of fame, but this was a statue outside.

The kiddos enjoying digging for Dinosaur bones.

Spurs on display.

Colton

Caleigh

Claire

After we left Ft.Worth we then headed to Stephenville. On the way there, we passed a store where they build custom rustic furniture and they have built the worlds largest rocking chair. So, we stopped to take some pictures.

Proof...

Living in Northeast Texas, the kids haven't seen too many cactus (neither has their mama), so I took this picture of them in from of the cactus.

For some reason unknown to me, my kids love water towers. Here is a picture of them under an old water tank.

And then I ran out of room on my memory card....not to worry, I had the computer with me, so I was able to clean off the memory card...whew, that was close.

Vacation Day 1

So, we finally decided it was time to go on a family vacation this year, and since my little sister was graduating from college, we made our trip to her graduation our vacation. We had planned for a couple of weeks to leave here Wednesday morning and head out to the DFW area to do something fun like the zoo or aquarium. But at Maggies birthday party, a friend of ours told us she worked at the Ft. Worth Museum of Science and History, and that she could get us tickets anytime we wanted. So Tuesday rolled around, and we had everything packed and ready to go for the next morning and Jacob and I looked at each other and said, lets just go after supper. So, we ate cleaned up the kitchen and hit the road. We drove to FW while the kids slept and found a hotel room. Wednesday morning we got up, got ready and headed to the museum. Here are a few pictures from that day.

The front of the museum

Caleigh and Claire with a giant doll

The kids in a dino foot print

Cattle Brands hanging overhead

Dino outside

The end of summer is quickly approaching us and we are trying to make the most of it. Jacob left this afternoon to go to Broken Bow with his dad, brother and another friend of theirs for a little overnight fishing trip. So, the kids and I loaded up to head out to do something fun too. I secretly packed all of the kids swimming suits, towells and life jackets, and we headed off to my mom and dads and while I had already ran the idea by daddy, but when the kids saw his boat they began begging to go to the lake :). It didn't take too long so we got things together and headed that way.
It was the girls first time to ride in a "motor boat" and I believe they had a blast. We went to the company park where we used to spend our summers during my junior high and highschool summers. Being there brought back so many memories. I hope my children have something like that to look back at when they are older that will bring a smile their hearts too.