The history of the Rangers goes back to before Texas became a state, as a matter of fact they were first formed in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico, to protect the settlers from Indian attacks and there has been some form of Rangers ever since.The museum covers from the very beginning to modern times. They have a 45 minute film which was done by the History Channel and gives you a great history of the Rangers.
I'm just going to post some pictures with notes on this one. If you have ten minutes the following link is a good read about the Rangers:
Texas Rangers
Click on the picture above, it's not great but it's the best I could do. These are the Texas Rangers of today, all 135 of them to cover a State that contains 268,601 square miles. In comparison the precinct house I worked out of in Detroit covered 29 square miles and we had 240 cops assigned there.
The Rangers like to fancy their firearms up just a little bit, here's a few examples.
Some just a little fancier then others & a little longer.
What do you get the Ranger that saved your kidnapped 5 year old daughter, why a thank you 45 cal automatic.The very first Texas Ranger Badge.
Two rifles that were used to Kill Bonnie & Clyde.Picture of the Retired Rangers that chased down Bonnie & Clyde
Texas Ranger and the Lone Star State
Texas Rangers on Patrol in 1896
Cameron Park Zoo
As we walked from the parking area to the entrance of the Zoo all you could hear was a loud screaming, after hearing it for about ten minutes we found out that it was coming from the Gibbon Monkey, which sits in the top of a tree and spend the morning screaming until around noon. He does this to mark his territory or else to give all the early visitors a headache, this is a short video of one doing his morning thing, turn on the sound and cover your ears.
Here is another video of a Coral Snake winding his way around and through a plant, this is the most movement that we've every seen out of a snake and especially one so colorful. Remember the saying "Red next to Yellow will kill a fellow, Red next to Black is a friend of Jack", that way you wont pick up the wrong type of snake to play with.
Hang in there with us, this is the last video, the only thing I've ever see a Galapagos Tortoise move was his head but as soon as we walked up this one decided to run across the enclosure for us, well if you can call this running, this is actual speed.
OK now a little about the Zoo, this zoo is set up probably better then any other one we've been to, instead of having to decide which section you want to go to first like most zoo's this one you have two choices, left or right, just follow the trails and you will see the entire zoo. Other then the above videos I think our favorite, which I've never seen before, was the Night House, here everything was lite by black lights so you could see the night creatures, bats, raccoons, owls and such moving around and doing things. The bats were flying around and eating from some hanging bananas, one small owl had a mouse that he was ripping apart to eat.
We got to the Zoo right at noon and there were three school bus's and about thirty cars with parents just leaving, so there were maybe 50 to 75 people in the entire zoo with us.
This is a white Diamondback Rattler, it's not a true Albino Diamondback because it doesn't have the pink Eyes. But he sure has a mean look on his face
Loved the Owls with the black lite.
This giraffe had cleaned all the leafs off of the trees around him so he had to start kneeing to get the feed on the ground
We were this close to the big cat but there was a thick piece of glass between us.
Ever have a real bad hair day.
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We stumbled across a place called Heritage Village, we thought that it was going to be a little like Greenfield Village, but it turned out to be a bunch of old time buildings with, grain mill, blacksmith shop, general store, diner, and such and they were trying to sell you their wares at inflated prices, so we just walked around the gardens and building.
I'm a Pepper, she's a Pepper wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too.
Gee! Guess where we went today, that's right the Dr Pepper Museum, which is located in the original Bottle plant building. It was OK but unless you're a confirmed Dr Pepper nut like Cathy is, you probably don't need to go. There were two floors of displays and a few interesting facts about Dr Pepper but we found the most entertaining thing there was a 30 minute film showing their commercials from probably around the 1960's to the present. That brought back a lot of memories and a lot of laughs (forgot how funny some of them were). After that we drove over to the First Street Cemetery and walked around in the cold wind looking at all the old graves and stones.
This is why they always had the 10-2-4 on their bottles and signs.Go ahead and sing along with Barry, you know you want to.
Final Note for Waco, if you've never been here the reason that you go Wacko is the way the streets are set up, they all run NE to SW or NW to SE, so you can't drive across town east to west without zigzaging and making 300 turns. Then they have five lane streets with 4 lanes running one direction and only one lane running the other, very few traffic lights but a illion 4 way stop intersections.
