Magnolia Market and Snake Porn in Waco Texas…

One of the main attractions for many who visit Waco Texas is the Magnolia Market at the Silos, a creation of Chip and Joanna Gaines of the TV show Fixer Upper. As I mentioned before they have really put Waco on the map. At a cost of 1.4 million dollars they opened the Magnolia complex in October of 2015.

The Magnolia complex is basically a large area with a few stores which surround a large courtyard/playground. There are several food trucks parked along the perimeter of the complex offering an assortment of eats. Home decorating and tourist items can be found in the stores but there is also a seed shop selling plants and a fabulous little bakery selling goodies. One tip we can offer is don’t pay for parking. There are signs everywhere offering parking spaces for $5 to $10 yet there is free parking adjacent to the property right off of 8th Street. Another tip is go early during the weekdays as it will be packed with people…

Sharon enjoyed browsing but did not purchase anything since we don’t own a sticks and bricks house. However we could not resist the Silos Baking Co. bakery filled with Joanna's personal recipes and hand-picked favorites. Some of those favorites were "The Prize Pig" bacon and cheddar biscuit and the "Nuts & Bolts" cupcake  which both sounded delightful but it was the large pecan and walnut topped cinnamon roll that won our stomachs over. All I can say it it was very DELISH!!!!

A nice feature at the complex is a free city trolley which takes visitors on a loop of the downtown area. It has a pre-recorded infomercial about Waco playing while driving around and we soon knew all there is to know about what to see or do in Waco. It isn’t a very long tour but the fact that you can hop on and off allows for visitors to easily enjoy other shopping, eating and drinking establishments in downtown Waco.

Since it didn’t take us too long to explore the Magnolia Market at the Silos we found the Lake Waco Wetlands. It is a haven for wetlands critters but also has some hiking trails and boardwalks which gave us an up-close and personal look into the interior of a fresh water marsh. The highlight on this trip was some snakes and crawfish we saw doing some interesting things.

Alongside one of the open water ponds there was a culvert which had water gushing into it as the water source of the pond. Interestingly there were crawfish that appeared to be climbing up a small bank alongside the culvert and then “jumping” off the edge into the swirling waters inside the culvert. It was a mystery we puzzled over and finally figured there could only be two plausible explanations for their behavior.

One is that they were simply having fun – like a water themed park ride and they were riding the wave! A more likely explanation was that there were lots of small fish inside the culvert and this behavior was more likely an elaborate hunting technique with the crawfish hoping to snag a fish as it swirled around the current. Either way it was absolute fun watching them…

Even cooler than seeing the crawfish was the fact that there were also about three to five Water Snakes who were there also hunting the schooling fish. We saw several small fish meet their demise as a Yellow Bellied Water Snake would spear one in its mouth and then swim off so it could secure it better to finish swallowing it. Very cool!

What could top these fun sightings? Well while watching the snakes hunt fish two of them started coiling up together and before we knew it, they were doing the dirty. Yep that's right – snake porn before our very eyes. Check out videos I linked here to see them doing the dirty as well as one that shows one of the snakes spearing a small fish. Sharon caught the fish spearing on video and if you watch it you will hear her excitement at capturing it on film… 

NOTE: We left Waco Texas and went to Jacksboro Texas to hide out for part of the Memorial Day weekend but are now in Wichita Falls, Texas…

Lots to See and Do in Waco Texas…

The time came to finally leave the hill country so three hours later we pulled into a Corps of Engineer Park on Lake Waco near Waco Texas. The park is called Airport Park as it is near a local small airport. There actually was no airplane noise and the sites were huge with nearly every one of them having a water view. We settled into our site and enjoyed the park and lake views our first day. 

Surprisingly after that day, we found lots of things to do in Waco! The town has recently seen an increase in tourism mostly due to the TV show Fixer Upper hosted by Chip and Joanna Gaines. They have really put Waco on the map and even built a few businesses in town we visited as well. More on that in a later blog..

There are some exceptionally nice parks in Waco for walking and biking. We enjoyed  William Cameron Park, for a riverside walk along the Brazos River. The walk extends through the large park to downtown and to Baylor University. Within the park are several trails providing a forested canopy and steep limestone bluffs which act as a backdrop to visitors walking in the park. We drove the park road above the bluffs and were treated to a panoramic view of the area. Another day we visited Brazos Park East where we played disc golf. We found the course to be very challenging and I even lost a disc in one of the water hazards. Despite the loss we had a blast playing this extra long course.

Another day walking along the Brazos River we crossed a cool suspension bridge and near the bridge was a neat sculpture. The longhorn cattle sculpture depicts the western cowboys herding their cattle on the Chisolm Trail. Beyond the sculpture near the downtown area we enjoyed sights such as the county courthouse and the tallest building in town. the Alico building.

We found several fun taverns in town and grabbed a bite at a few spots as well. For a cold beer we really enjoyed Crickets and the Dancing Bear Pub. A regional chain we tried out called the Twisted Burger was not as good as we hoped but it certainly had a fun, quirky ambiance. One rainy day we headed north to West Texas and visited the Czech Stop Bakery for some of their very delicious Kolaches, a delightful Czech pastry and a real Road Treat. We also stopped in at Slovacek’s  for some of their great Texas sausage!

That same day we drove over to Lake Whitney State Park and were treated to a roadrunner right after we entered the park. It is always fun to see the roadrunners buzzing across the roads and as most , it had us thinking, “beep, beep.” Sharon and I also stopped in a wooded area because I heard some painted buntings singing in their territories. I was able to call some of them up and we were thrilled to see the males in their full spring plumage of brilliant colors. One was so close I was able to get a great picture which is the header pic of this blog.

There were even more fun things we found in Waco but I will include them in the next blog…

NOTE: We were in Waco Texas but are now at our next park in Jacksboro Texas…