Homeward Bound: The Incredibly Long Journey With a Hedgehog, a Puppet Giraffe, and a Famous Frog – Part III – Texas Touring Turns to a Tiresome Trip

Posted on January 6, 2014 by princesspricklepants

Previously: Part II – The Long Louisiana Slog

Texas Touring Turns to a Troubling and Tiresome Travail

We left the behind the sad disappointment of the Louisiana Visitor’s Center and decided to try something we’d never done before – to visit the Texas Visitor’s Center. So we did.

On arriving they had this helpful warning:

In case you are wondering, that is Kermit in a “holding arm up to shade eyes while scanning for snakes” pose, rather than Kermit in a “holding arm up in alarm upon learning that the Visitor’s Center actually just prominently warned us about snake risk” pose, though if you’d like to imaging it’s the latter, then feel free. We try to be accomodating.

On arriving we also found the (now expected) disappointment of institutionalized pet prejudice. Sorrow welled up in the hearts of us all, but Princess Sophie borrowed a page from the book of Fancy.

Disclaimer: Please note that Princess Sophie did not smoke. Please also not that Princess Pricklepants didn’t smoke, nor did Fancy or anyone else in our entourage.

While we don’t have photographic evidence to prove it, this Visitor’s Center was also closed, so we weren’t able to learn about Texas and the interesting and varied things within its gigantic borders. There was a really neat looking boardwalk over a swampy area that we (for limited versions of “we” that do not include Ryan) were interested in checking out. I think maybe it was only a couple people who were interested in the swamp. Perhaps just me. Still, it looked like a great learning opportunity for the hedgehog. Yet it was not to be.

Suffering that bitter disappointment, I looked around hopefully for snakes. None were found. But there was a separate pet rest area.

Separate but equal being unequal, Fancy staged a sit-in as a protest, but wasn’t able to sit.

Princess joined in.

Kermit joined as well.

They got tired and decided to have a rest on the sign along with a small rock.

Fancy joined in.

The center also had a very large star that everyone stood near. The hugeness reflecting that the state is remarkably large. Here is the star from afar.

Here is the star quite near with Max expressing fear.

There also was a Texas shape cut out, in case your location was in doubt.

Disclaimer: Kermit was not in any way attempting to infringe on the intellectual property of the “Hang In There” kitten poster.

With some free time, Fancy spent more time in rehearsal for Annoying Private Ryan:

This was a really good rehearsal.

We arrived at the Visitor’s Center around 3:00 and left about fifteen minutes later.

Then we drove, and drove, and drove.

Reaching the border of Texas can give you a brief illusory sense of being close to being home. This sense of hope will gently fade over the many, many hours of driving from the border to Austin.

Around 7 we went for dinner at Chuy’s. Kermit and the Art Models were excited to find the Elvis shrine.

The Art Models were happy to finally get a photo in. They felt neglected this trip.

On the other hand, the kids were a little tired of the camera.

Th Annoying Private Ryan rehearsal went over poorly, even with the amazing setting.

Sadly Private Ryan was very tired of helping in rehearsing, and confiscated the camera. This was the final image captured.

Fancy was still pleased. Around 9:30 we finally made it to the outskirts of Austin a bit annoyed at how big Texas is. And so our incredibly long journey with a hedgehog, a puppet giraffe, and a famous frog drew to a close.

Homeward Bound: The Incredibly Long Journey With a Hedgehog, a Puppet Giraffe, and a Famous Frog

Posted on January 4, 2014 by princesspricklepants

Part I – New Years IHOP

Disclaimer: dear readers, we fully understand that as this is a hedgehog blog, and as such, content should feature and focus on hedgehogs, and in particular our favorite hedgehog. Please note that the following post is only minimally hedgehog related, but serves as critical bridge into further posts that will highlight hedgehog related antics, hijinks, adventures, perils, peregrinations, and other words for the kinds of things these blog posts tend to include. It primarily features a close personal friend to our hedgehog.

Disclaimer disclaimer: Please note that the previous disclaimer was very wordy for a disclaimer leading into a blog post. If you aren’t interested in reading long disclaimers, feel free to skip the previous section.

Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer: Its come to the editor’s attention that it’s unlikely a reader would encounter the disclaimer disclaimer until after encountering the disclaimer which would make it unlikely that the reader would actually be able to skip the passage in question. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Post disclaimer: There are numerous disclaimers that could be posted about previous disclaimers but in the interest of proceeding to content rather than discussions about content we will pause in our disclaiming for the time being. If critical disclaiming is required, please rest assured that we will make sure to disclaim critical issues.

Post disclaimer disclaimer: Sorry, this really was just gratuitous.

So anyway, we drove back. It was rainy. We past the Mississippi visitor center but it really seemed very cold, unwelcoming, and a generally bad scene for a hedgehog, a giraffe puppet, a stuffed frog, or humans. We didn’t take a picture to allow the active imaginations of our readers the opportunity of building a more dramatic scene in the imagination.

So we drove non-stop to Pearl City Louisiana, which interestingly was before the Louisiana Visitor’s Center, as if the Visitor Center was trying to tell you something about just how interesting that place was.

Disclaimer: The Louisiana Visitor Center isn’t very honest, it’s actually a lovely gem of a town.

We pulled in, set up Princess’s home in our motel and then realized that it was New Years Eve and we needed to eat. We went to find a place to eat working around the picky Princess Sophie’s demands we eventually went to IHOP. We could not bring Princess P. P. due to the institutional pet prejudice that prevent pets participation in potlucks, restaurants, and most eating establishments.

Man, that’s a lot of words before a single photo. We are violating a basic rule of our blog – “show, don’t tell.”

We have an IHOP tradition, started by the current author of this piece, that when we get to the table, we take spoons and pour spoons full of syrup as a kind of IHOP aperitif.

Disclaimer: We’d seen Saving Mr. Banks recently and since then I’ve constantly had Mary Poppins songs lilting through my head, so please mentally accompany the following images with “a spoon full of syrup” to get a full sense of the experience.

Mmmm, Fancy likes syrup.