Waco Weekend

People always talk about Waco like it's a tiny town, but I think of it as a medium city, so I was quite surprised to find out how very small it actually is! Turns out, Waco has a population of only 135,000. (For comparison, Bryan/College Station has over 255,000.)

Other than my not feeling well most of the weekend, Jeff and I had fun visiting various attractions around town. We went to the Dr. Pepper Museum, which was recently renovated to add another whole building. It's a lot more than just Dr. Pepper.

Toured the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, which is very interesting, and has a LOT of guns. Some of the guns were super-pretty. I was actually quite impressed with the designs. There are 2 female Rangers in the state currently, one of whom is in Austin. Also, I learned that the Lone Ranger character was a former Texas Ranger. (WHAT? I had no clue.) In the early days, rangers had to make their own badges, because the state didn't provide them, so there are a lot of different styles of them on display.

We walked across the Waco Suspension Bridge, which is actually one of the coolest places! It's part of the Chisolm Trail, originally constructed in 1870 as a toll bridge for wagons, pedestrians and cattle to cross the Brazos River.

We also went to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. It's a great place with tons of memorabilia from all sorts of Texas sports. There is an enormous, separate hall exclusively for the former Southwest Conference, where each school has its own exhibit. That was really neat!

We drove around Baylor campus. Their basketball arena with the gold roof is WAY cool!

We stopped at the university's bear habitat, where we (and several children) were very disappointed to discover there were no bears. There was a sign that said the staff take the bears on field trips out in the wild sometimes, so I hope they were having fun somewhere.

We stayed at the Hotel Indigo, which I very highly recommend! The hotel is beautiful and modern. The room was spacious and nice. The staff couldn't have been friendlier or more helpful. We had a view of the ALICO Building (where in downtown Waco does one NOT have a view of the ALICO Building- ha!), which we learned is the home of the American-Amicable Life Insurance Company (ALICO).

My favorite dinner was at Twisted Root Burger Co., which is everywhere in Texas EXCEPT Austin. Yummo!

We have a second Waco trip planned with Scott-n-Julie to do the Magnolia Market and Mammoth National Monument. Magnolia Market was close to our hotel, and even on an off-season Saturday, that place is overflowing with visitors. We'll be going during the week, thankyouverymuch!