Day 7 - San Marcos to Waco, Texas

First up, we visited Dick's Garage at San Marcos, Texas.  Dick's Garage is a car museum with around 80 quality vintage cars on display.  What's amazing here is the condition (and rarity) of the cars.

Here is a 1928 Duesenburg.  What a car! They had four on display; this one is valued at USD3 million.  It has a straight eight engine and very much top of the range.

 This one's a 1936 Cord V8 convertible, shining in black.

Row of long bonnets...

Now, this is the one we came to see.  A 1948 Tucker Torpedo.  What an amazing story.  Only 51 were ever built before the 'big three' put Tucker out of business.  47 still survive.  This one is valued at USD 2.5 million and has never been driven.

   The Tucker had many safety features not heard of in the 1940s, including disc brakes, pop-out front windscreen, seat belts and a central light between the two main lights that swivelled as you turned corners.  A rear-mounted helicopter engine was used to power the Tucker.

We're hoping to see another four or so of these during our travels, so let's see how we go.  For the record, this is known as "Number 1050", the last Tucker to be made.

We got talking to the Museum Director and he got us behind the ropes to have a closer look at the Tucker.  What a treat to get this close to such a special car.



Here's a line-up of cars, with the Tucker at the far end.

This one's a Pontiac Star Chief.

And here's a 1931 Packard - all such beautiful pieces of engineering and design

From Dick's, we drove up to Austin, Texas to see the State Capital building.  We passed through the metal detectors and armed guards before exploring the first four floors of this spectacular building.  The central section of the building is 'hollow' so if you're standing under the dome, you can look right up to the top of the building.  Awesome.

There are a number of statues in the State Capital grounds.  Here is one...

This little guy was a bit shy but posed for long enough for me to snap a quick picture.  We later saw a few more squirrels, chilling out under some trees in the State Capital grounds.

Back on the road again, this time bound for Georgetown, TX to check out some cave systems.  One the way we passed through some serious road systems.  I have a hunch this is nothing compared to what we'll see soon.

Here's Nige, making his way into the Inner Space Cavern cave system at Georgetown.  Basically it's a half mile in and half a mile out.  It was discovered by some roading engineers in 1963 when they were drilling core samples to ensure the interstate (which is directly above the cave) had a solid foundation.

There are a few bats in the cave - Nige is pointing to one here.  They are tiny Eastern Pipistrelle bats, about the size of a chicken nugget.

Here's a sequence of photos I took in the cave this afternoon...

Back on I35 northwards to Waco, Texas, where we found a Motel 6 and settled down for the night.  Given that we're still in Texas, we decided to try a Texan steak.  Actually, it was really good.  That reminds me of something we saw last night -  a drive-in fast food outfit, with around 20 drive up bays.  You drive up to a bay and order your food.  It is delivered to your car without you even having to get out.  You sit in your car, eat your food, biff the rubbish out and get on your way.  Hmmm.  We didn't eat there...

Finally, if you travel along the interstate highway system for any length of time, you'll see a lot of these.  Massive billboards you can see for miles, advertising everything from hamburgers to religion.

Tomorrow, we're visiting the local TV station at Waco, KWTX - News 10, then on to Dallas and then Abilene.  See you!  PF

Let us know if you want us to post a picture of anything in particular.  Chris has already asked us to find an oil pump rocker.    We've altered the blog settings, so you can add comments now :)