I know that’s not a very clever title, but we spent a lot of time on the road in July. We started with our family road trip throughout Arkansas. Then we made a long round trip drive to collect Maya and Ian from Camp LolliPop. And finally, we drove to Caddo Mills and back one weekend so that Maya and I could collect on one of our Christmas 2022 gifts. For two adults who don’t have a commute, July saw quite a few miles added to the odometer.

Sean and I had the whole week after our Arkansas trip to ourselves while the kids were in Alabama with Lolli and Pop. We didn’t have a reason for sending them off other to let them spend more time with their grandparents, so it’s not like we had a lot going on at home. Both of us were in catch-up mode at our jobs, Sean especially. We tried and failed to replace a faucet in the kitchen early in the week, and I think that may have hampered our enthusiasm for household projects.

We did manage to stop by the Celis Brewery to try a few beers and stock up our garage fridge. We also took advantage of Maya’s absence to cook a favorite octopus dish of ours. Despite what happened when she was three, Maya is now steadfastly against the consumption of octopus. In deference to her, we don’t eat it when she’s around, but we were happy to take the opportunity while she was in Alabama. The recipe we made comes from “The Magic of Tinned Fish” by Chris McDade. It features smashed and fried potatoes, fried tinned octopus, and a lovely drizzle of homemade aioli.

Meanwhile, Lolli and Pop made sure the kids’ visit was chock-full of fun. For one, to Maya and Ian’s immense delight, they spent hours at the pool nearly every day. Ian started off his week referring to the Homewood pool as the waterpark, so much did he enjoy the pool’s amenities. Maya came back to us an acorn-brown color on her back and arms.

They went to Okinawa restaurant one day where the kids again discovered they like sushi. At a different restaurant, Ian discovered that he liked bacon and egg omelets. They “discovered” that they like cake and ice cream too!

On Monday, they all went to Chattanooga! One of the things they did was take the Missionary Ridge Local train ride offered by the Tennessee Valley Railroad. I don’t know if it’s still true, but generally speaking, Maya especially is a big fan of pretty much any kind of mass transit, so hopefully she had fun. They also went to the Tennessee Aquarium, which I know they loved. They were both full of stories about a giant pacific octopus who wasn’t just sitting still but actually swimming around.

They went one day to see the Dill Pickers perform; Maya and Ian needed a little humor and bluegrass in their lives. Then they all went and watched a Birmingham Children’s Theatre production of Treasure Island. Another day they went to Chuck E Cheese. I am pleased to tell you that it’s the first time they’ve ever been, and I’m not sure we’ve bothered to let them know that there are some Chuck E Cheeses in Austin too.

We’ve been referring to it as Camp LolliPop. Lolli and Pop kept those kids BUSY. When we Facetimed them in the evenings, Maya and Ian seemed like they had better things to do than talk to us boring bozos.

When their week was over, we met Harry in Jackson, MS to pick the kids up, and they seemed pretty sad to see the end of their visit. We’ve been trying to make the most of our little stopovers though. This time, we had some really solid bbq at a place called The Pig & Pint. It was there that we (mostly Sean) discovered we like a local beer called Colsons. It’s yellow, and Sean is not normally one to suffer yellow beer.

We stayed the night Jackson on Saturday and then drove back to Austin the next day. The drive home was especially long since we had just driven the 8 or 9 hours to get to Jackson the day before, but we managed well enough. Once back home, the kids settled into kind of a mope. Home was so boring compared to their super fun week with Lolli and Pop. Mom and Dad had to do their boring jobs and couldn’t run kids to the pool or the park every day. No fun at all.

Ian did get to go to a bouldering camp the week they were back, which he loved. On the first day, he was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but every day after that, he’d point out that if he got there early, he could play with his friends. Maya had been signed up for a coding camp, but it was canceled due to low enrollment. She did however have a couple of hangouts with friends from school, which seemed to perk her up a little.

We also went one evening to see the new Indiana Jones movie (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) at our local Alamo Drafthouse. Not only do they have $7 movies on Tuesdays, Sean also scored some gift cards from our local Costco that essentially worked out to a 20% discount.

The kids weren’t even home a week before we were in the car again! This time we “only” had to drive to Caddo Mills, TX. This past Christmas, Maya and I had received the chance to take part in the Trainer for a Day program at Window to the Wild. She and I were going to get to help train birds for a couple hours on Saturday morning.

We drove up the night before and stayed in a hotel. This gave us the opportunity to stop by Waco on the way through and pick up another interesting bottle of whiskey from Balcones Distillery. It also let us stop by the Milk Bottle Cookies store for … cookies!

The next morning after a quick hotel breakfast we drove into Caddo Mills to the Window to the Wild location. As we were pulling in, Sean looks at me and says, “Where do you find these places?!” It was maybe a little off the beaten path. The facility was great though. Lindsey and Simon McNeny clearly care for their creatures. They seem to forever be looking at how they can make the environment better for the bird inhabitants.

We started our morning watching a trumpeter hornbill flying about, accepting food. We learned about the some of the fundamentals of training – that it should be reward based, and that you need to ensure you aren’t accidentally rewarding non-preferred behaviors.

Maya spent some time chucking food into an aquarium full of water for a pretty hadada ibis to fly over and collect (it would have been dangerous to try to feed that spike-billed creature directly). She chucked some more food to an Abyssinian Ground Hornbill, who was really good at catching the meat bits, and fed a little (I think) Pied Crow from a small cup full of meat bits.

We spent quite a few cycles trying to get a crow (I think) to take a slightly smashed metal can from our hands and flying it over to a recycling bin. Maya’s body naturally wants to wiggle a bit, so she had a hard time holding still. The bird, understandably, wanted a reliable perch. I was able to get the bird to collect the recycling and place it in the bin. Maya was able to hand the bird the can and he’d take it to the bin.

We met many other birds. Here are some that I’ve listed: East African Crowned Crane, a raven named Blogden who I remember talking to us, though I can’t recall what was said, a Barbary Saker Falcon, and a few others who I may have not gotten written down fast enough.

I wish like crazy I had written down all the animals’ names. These folks have a way with naming things. At one point, Simon grins and says, “This is Papua. He’s our new Guinea.” (Oh yeah, we saw a Guinea too – so speckled and pretty.)

We went over to feed a black vulture who was doing speed drills, running back and forth between his handlers and Maya and I at speed to collect all the meaty treats. Maya said his beak hurt a little but that it was worth it to have him eating out of her hand. We watched Lindsey and Simon handle on of the bald eagles that lived there. When he was still or in flight, he looked as majestic as you might expect. When he walked around on the ground, he looked sort of ungainly, even a bit derpy.

Maya and I got to hold a really lovely little American Kestrel named Falcor. I think Maya loved this one because it was tiny enough not to make her arm tired AND she didn’t have to wear a big leather glove to protect her skin.

Then we got to have a bird fly to us! A red tailed hawk would fly to us, accept its meat treat, and then fly back to its perch for another meat treat. To be proper trainers, we had to keep our perch steady and show that we had a treat worth acquiring. If he didn’t come right away, we took the treat away and waited a moment before offering it again.

It was incredibly cool and maybe a little alarming to have that much bird flying at your face. Maya did a great job and seemed to love the experience, which of course was the whole point.

Still with gloves on, we got to hold a gentle Great Horned Owl named Hermes (Lindsey and Simon are Harry Potter fans). His eyes were gigantic, and it was explained to us that despite the common depiction of an owl as a wise creature, because their eyes occupy so much space, their brains are actually relatively small. Hermes was big enough that he actually started to feel heavy after a while and you could really tell Maya was warring between the desire to hold the owl for as long as possible and the need to rest her weary arm.

We ended the bird part of our visit by checking out the enclosure that held a variety of tropical birds as well as a happy little brood of chickens. Maya was absolutely delighted when Gil the Rose-Breasted Cockatoo actually did what we call the cockatoo dance with her. He also talked to us a bit, which was fun. In that same area we got to see a blue and gold macaw and a Yellow-naped Amazon. Toward the end of our visit, I walked over to the pretty Yellow-naped Amazon and tried to talk to it. It appeared to tolerate me briefly before finally hollering out “Goodbye!” I took it as my hint to leave the bird alone, though Simon told us it was actually a tactic to get us to stay (since he had just opened the door to leave the enclosure.)

Before we left, the kids got to meet the dog, several goats, and a couple of tortoises. They were gifted with some pretty macaw feathers, which now hold pride of place on the shelves in their rooms. And Maya and I got to go see the mother of all garden spiders, and on our way over to check it out, we saw a huge wolf spider, her back covered in babies! Ian would not have been impressed with any of this, so it’s good he stayed with the goats.

All too soon it was time for us to leave. If you have a bird lover in your life, especially if you’re in the Dallas area, this is definitely an experience worth having. Plus Window to the Wild is a nonprofit, so your dollars will directly benefit those creatures. Hooray!

On our way back home, we decided to swing through Dallas for lunch and a liquor store visit. We ate at a delightful place called Rex’s Seafood & Market. Everyone enjoyed their seafood lunch a great deal. Everyone, except Ian. He ordered a cheese flatbread, but instead of being coated in mozzarella like a pizza most likely would be, it had a variety of cheeses on it. He flatly refused to eat it. Instead he ate some fries and some of my fish and some of my broccolini.

After lunch, we let Sean stop in at a fancy-pants liquor store called Pogo’s Wine & Spirits. It sounds like it’s probably in our best interest to be a couple hundred miles away from this place. There are plenty of unique bottles to be had, some at very precious prices.

Thankfully, after an Arkansas road trip, a round trip weekend drive to Jackson, MS and another weekend drive to Caddo Mills and back, we were done with our driving adventures for a bit. We closed out the month mostly hanging around home. The kids had yet another camp that was canceled for low enrollment so they’ve been stuck at home. We took them out for “robot sushi” at a local place called Kura one night, just to break things up a bit. They were in heaven. Plus a robot brought us our drinks, which they loved.

On the last Saturday of the month, Sean took Ian to try out an archery lesson at Archery Country here in Austin. This was one of his Christmas gifts. (We were shooting for replacing some of the stuff we might normally buy with interesting experiences instead.) He seemed to really like it! It’s hard to coordinate all the things you need to when shooting a bow and arrow, and I think that frustrated him some, but he seemed to hit the target reasonably often and by his second lesson in early August, might have been gaining a touch more accuracy. He wants to keep going to lessons, so for now, we’ll keep taking him.

Meanwhile, Texas is cooking. We finally managed to get our sprinklers working again, but not before most of the front yard grass and even the back yard natives were looking pretty crispy. It’s a hundred degrees every day and zero rain to speak of, and since we’re on watering restrictions, everything would have dried out anyway. At the end of July, it still looks like there’s a lot of summer to go, and I don’t think I’ll miss it once it’s gone.