Bear-y Scary Times

Hi Kids,

I can't believe it's been a month since I've blogged. Time flies and soon school will be out! I've been on another trip but I haven't finished telling you about my last one yet! So here's a little more about my San Antonio trip.

At the top of this post is Miss Eva from the San Antonio Convention and Visitors' Bureau with me. She sent each of you a pencil -- which Miss Elaine needs to bring you!

This is me with Chef Donald Hoffman. We had breakfast with him at the Marriott Rivercenter Hotel. He gave us some of his special seasoned salt -- yum.

This is Miss Elaine and Chef Rudy at the Culinary Institute of America. We were learning how to make some dishes that people might have eaten in Texas many years ago. And they still like it now. Miss Elaine is making a salsa verde -- that's Spanish for green sauce -- using a stone molcajete to crush the tomatillos. Next time she'll use a blender!

And this is me in my chef's toque. They let me wear it but they wouldn't let me cook!

One of the best things we did was go to Sea World. And do you know who else was there? Jungle Jack Hanna was there and he brought lots of animals with him. He REALLY liked me!

This was the scary part. We went to his dressing room after his show and he had two cheetahs running loose. Their names are Bella and Jacob and they are five months old. They looked like big kitties. I got in Miss Elaine's bag. I didn't want them to think I was a play toy!

Then we went to the Shamu show. That wasn't scary -- just a little wet when the whale hit the water!

Love,

Fluffy

Cruisin' Down the River

Hi Kids,

Well, I've been on the road again -- finally! Miss Elaine and I left last Thursday for San Antonio, Texas. And it wasn't easy. We left early for the airport and got there only to find out that our plane was indefinitely delayed. BUT there was another flight leaving in only ten minutes. We ran to the gate and were able to get on that plane. We felt so smart! Then we sat on the tarmac, and sat, and sat. Finally, the pilot's voice came over the intercom, "Sorry, folks, we can't take off because the Houston airport is shut down because of fog." We had to fly to Houston to get to San Antonio. Look at the map -- this doesn't make any sense! But that's the way the airline routed us.

We finally took off, arriving in Houston three minutes after our connecting flight left. Because the airport had been shut down, all the flights were messed up. We couldn't get another flight to San Antonio -- all the seats on all the flights were filled for the rest of the day.

We didn't know what we were going to do until the people picking us up at the San Antonio airport called and said, If you can get on a flight to Austin, we'll drive there and pick you up." And that's what we did. After we got to Austin, it was a little over an hour's drive to San Antonio. We got there just in time to join our group for a relaxing dinner cruise on the San Antonio River.

At the top, that's me with the captains of our two boats. The San Antonio River used to be a big muddy ditch which occasionally flooded. Back in the 40s (I think) the city put in flood control dams and made the river beautiful. Now it competes with the Alamo as the number one attraction in San Antonio. And it inspired people in Oklahoma City to build the Bricktown Canal.

This is a picture of our boat as we boarded. We started our dinner with a spinach salad. We also had salmon (I bet they knew that bears love salmon), rice and broccoli. For dessert there was a big piece of chocolate cake. I was very careful not to get any frosting on my fur!

Here's some video Miss Elaine took from the boat. You can see the pretty lights and all the people on the sides of the river walking or eating. It is a very lively place with lots of restaurants and shops. You can also hear the captain telling us about the sights along the river.

Love,

Fluffy

Fluffy Meets Fidget

Hi Kids,
I can't tell you how boring it's been at my house. I've been sitting in the bedroom for two months now -- just looking at the suitcase and wondering when I'm going to get to go somewhere again. Miss Elaine always has the same excuse, "I'm working on the book." So we haven't been anywhere. But I never shared this video with you from our trip to St. Louis, so I made her help me post it. We were at the St. Louis Zoo which is just about our favorite zoo of all time. Ask me if I really got to meet Fidget. No! He was afraid of me so I had to get in the bag -- then he was afraid of the bag! So I had to sit in a corner -- but I peeked out a little bit. I hope you enjoy the video. Do you think you can find out where Magellenic penguins live -- besides the zoo?
Love,
Fluffy

Where is Fluffy?

Hi Kids,

I bet you thought I was hibernating! It's been over a month since I've written. Sorry! I personally blame Miss Elaine who is working on a book and hasn't been traveling. But she never helped me tell you about my last trip to New Mexico.

We went to see art and artists of the northeastern part of the state -- Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Chimayo and Taos. We saw a lot of churches and a lot of religious art. The Spanish were the first settlers in New Mexico -- after the Indians. Priests often traveled with explorers and settlers. Their job was to spread the Catholic faith. Many of the people they taught couldn't read so they took paintings and statues of Bible characters and holy people. Flat paintings on wood were called retablos and carved statues were called bultos. We saw lots of these! This retablo and this bulto are very old.

And we met several artists who paint santos (holy images, either retablos or bultos or both). This is Arlene Cisneros Sena -- she painted a beautiful altar screen for the cathedral in Santa Fe. That's it up above.

We also visited the Taos pueblo. The houses are made of adobe -- some of the buildings are multi-storied. The Indian people have lived here for over 1000 years. The houses have no electricity or running water. The little round igloo-shaped things you see are ovens. The people who live here choose to live here because it is the traditional way.

We got to meet Robert Mirabal, a well-known musician, who lives close to the pueblo. He invited us to his house to eat traditional Indian food. We had venison stew (deer meat), trout, corn soup and lots of other good things.

It started snowing that afternoon. Everything looked so pretty! Do you wonder why I'm not in any of the pictures? It was COLD and I didn't have an extra coat! When I wasn't in the room, Miss Elaine carried me in a bag. It was so snuggy in there I didn't want to come out.

Love,

Fluffy

Cool Time in St. Louis

Hi Kids,

Miss Elaine and I spent last week in St. Louis, Missouri. It's on the eastern border of the state -- on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Before 1803, the Mississippi River was the western border of the United States. The Louisiana Purchase added a big chunk of the lands to the west (including all of Oklahoma except the panhandle) to the U.S. No one really knew much about what was out here so Lewis and Clark and other members of their Corps of Discovery were sent by President Jefferson to check things out. And they started in St. Louis, which was then just a small French settlement. St. Louis became the gateway to the West.

Over 60 years ago, some people decided that a monument to Jefferson should be built. A competition was opened for designs for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. A Finnish-American architect, Eero Saarinen's plans for a stainless steel arch were chosen. Construction began in 1963 and was completed two-and-a-half years later in 1965. It wasn't until it was done that Saarinen realized that his construction looked like an entryway -- and it became nicknamed "Gateway Arch."

The Arch is 630 feet tall and 630 feet wide at the base. There is an observation room inside the top of the arch. Each leg has a tram which takes visitors to the top. This is me looking out one of the little windows in the observation room. Below you can see the historic Old Courthouse.

This is me with a National Park ranger.

Over a century after the Louisiana Purchase, one of America's most famous roads came through St. Louis. Sometimes called "The Mother Road," it went from Chicago to Santa Monica, California. It went through eight states including Missouri and Oklahoma. And it goes through Edmond. By the 1950s, the interstate system made Route 66 less important -- but it still has great historic importance. Look how narrow the highway is!


This is an old bridge over the Mississippi River. Did you see me on top of the sign?

Later we went to another famous place on Route 66. Ted Drewes opened a frozen custard stand on Route 66 in 1929. Ted would close the stand in the winter and open a Christmas tree lot. His ice cream was so popular that people wanted it even in the winter!


The frozen custard (ice cream made with eggs) is so thick and rich that you can turn the cup upside down and it won't run out. They call it a "concrete." Vanilla is the only flavor you can get -- but you can get lots of add-ins. The one Miss Elaine bought me is called "Cardinal Sin" and has frozen custard, sour cherries and hot fudge. Yum!

If you think that's cool, you should have been with us that evening. We went to a hockey game. We got to go down and see the ice. Miss Elaine sat me on the ice to take my picture. Wow! I have a fur coat but I can tell you -- I almost froze my tail!

I'll be writing you more about my adventures in the next few days!

Love,

Fluffy

Outdoors Bear

Hi Kids,
I like it when Miss Elaine takes me to museums and art galleries but I LOVE it when we get to play outdoors! Last week Miss Elaine and I visited Canyon of the Eagles on Lake Buchanan northwest of Austin, Texas. There are so many things to do there and even though we stayed several days we didn't have time to do them all.




We had a cool cabin with a porch overlooking the lake. This is me enjoying the view. We were so busy I never got to rock in the rocking chair! We arrived in the late afternoon and joined the group as it started getting dark for an Owl Prowl. It had to be just at the right time -- after the other little birds had gone to bed (so the owls wouldn't eat them!) but before it got too dark to see the owls.

Did you know that owls eat little birds and rodents but they can't digest the bones or hair so they barf them up. Have you ever had a cat with a hairball? The barf is kind of like that -- they call it "owl pellets." The naturalist had several dried pellets and she let Miss Elaine put on gloves and pull the pellet apart. Sure enough, there were some tiny bones in it.

As it got darker, the naturalist put on a recording of a screech owl and soon a real owl flew down to see what was going on! It started talking back to the recorder. Then another owl arrived and they started hooting to each other! The owls didn't seem to be afraid of us and let us get close enough to take this picture.





The next morning we took a boat trip up the Colorado River (this is the Colorado River in Texas, not the big Colorado River that goes through the Grand Canyon). We saw lots of birds including five bald eagles. This is me with Miss Cindy, one of our hosts for the trip.




The next day we got to go kayaking on the river. We were at a really pretty place where Fall Creek falls into the river -- see the waterfalls! I hope you liked the video at the top of my post. I was a little worried because Miss Elaine was messing with the camera instead of holding me tight. And, if you'll notice, she did not put a life jacket on me.





Here I am with J.P. Burchett with Buchanan Adventure Tours. He was teaching us how to geocache. Can you see the GPS I'm wearing? Do you know what GPS stands for?






Geocaching is a combination of a hike and a treasure hunt. You use the GPS to find the location of a hidden treasure (cache). You never know what will be inside the cache container, which could be a metal box or coffee can or a plastic cylinder.

Here's a cache we found -- it was hidden under some rocks.

Inside our cache we found some beads, a cardinal feather, a rubber worm and a little notebook and pen to write our names and the date we found the cache. The rule is, you can take something out of the cache if you replace it with something of equal value. We didn't have anything so we just closed it up and hid it again. This is Miss Eileen, another travel writer.







We had another adventure at Longhorn Caverns State Park. We had to walk down some steps to the entrance to the cave. This is an unusual cave in that it was created by swiftly moving water carving through the rock. There aren't very many stalactites or stalagmites in this cave -- those formations are created by water slowly seeping through rock and removing minerals. You can see in this picture that most of the walls are smoothed by the water. But you can also see some small icicles that were created by slow, dripping water.

This cave formation is called "The Bear" -- it seemed like a good place to get my picture taken. Here are two more travel writers, Miss Kendra and Miss Connie. They held me so Miss Elaine could take my picture.

Very few creatures live in the cave -- but there were a few bats. This is an eastern pipistrelle bat and he's hibernating.

One big room in the cave is full of calcite crystals. When people first saw them they thought they were diamonds. Were they disappointed! They are pretty, though. And they look magical with colored lights on them.


One night (Miss Elaine put me to bed early!) Miss Elaine and her friends went to the observatory in the park. They had two big telescopes and Miss Elaine got to look at the moon, Jupiter, Uranus, the Pleiades, the Andromeda galaxy and two nebula. Maybe next time she goes, I'll be big enough to stay up late. I wasn't too sad -- after all the fun I had, I was really tired. And my bed felt really good.

Love,

Fluffy

Fluffy's Scrapbook

Hi Kids,

I had lots of adventures in England. Here are pictures from some of my explorations. The picture above is of Mount's Bay from Madron Hill. This is the hill we walked up to go to the Trafalgar service -- more about that later. That island in the bay -- with the castle on top -- is Saint Michael's Mount. That's how the bay got its name. The town on the right side of the picture (which you can barely see) is Penzance. The village on the left side of the photo is Marazion.

One day we went to a cider farm -- that's me on a whole lot of apples. The land is owned by Prince Charles but he rented it to a friend of Miss Zoe (that's Miss Elaine's daughter). Her friend, Andy, grows apple trees and makes apple cider.


Later that week, we went to an Apple Fair in Penzance. There were all sorts of things made of apples -- including Andy's cider, apple cakes and cookies. There were many kinds of apples. People there think how things taste is more important than how they look -- so some of the apples look funny, but they're really good.

Penzance is on the south coast of England -- on the English Channel between England and France. There are many beautiful spots on the coast. This is at the Minack Theatre near Porthcurno. The theatre is carved out of the rocky coast. That's my family -- Miss Elaine and Mr. Jack, Miss Zoe and her husband, Mr. Simon.

One night we went to a special restaurant called The Meadery. Mead is an ancient drink made with honey. It's alcoholic, so, of course, I didn't drink any of it.

They have great food here and yummy desserts. This dessert has ice cream, toffee sauce, honey comb and crushed meringue. Mr. Simon and Miss Zoe let me taste theirs. Miss Elaine and Mr. Jack ate theirs all by themselves.

One of the coolest things we did was go to a special church service commemorating the victory of the English Navy over the French and Spanish fleets in 1805. The commander, Admiral Lord Nelson, died in the battle, so they remembered him, too. A group from a nearby Navy base brought their band and a group of sailors. The service was in a very old church -- over 600 years old. The music was beautiful and I loved the sailors -- I think they loved me, too!

Miss Elaine isn't very good at working with video but if you click on the start button of the video below, it should work. The picture is a little fuzzy -- but I think it's fun to hear the band!