Tyler TX: 275 miles*, 2 miles walked, 14 caches, dinosaur tracks, black vulture, white ibises and a different egret and a green-headed lizard.

*150,000+ miles on the car.

Breakfast at the motel was great! They had the makings for egg McMuffins as well as the usual cereal and Danish. I took advantage of it, and then we went to church. The priest gave a special blessing for graduates, including an older woman who was getting her second Master's.

Then back to the motel where we packed up, and then off to Glen Rose. Well, once we found the right road. Texas signage sucks. So do their on-off ramps. We were heading west on I-20 and had to find a turn-around. Grrr. But we got to the Dinosaur Valley State Park by noon.

There are two dinosaur models from the New York World's Fair, commissioned by Sinclair Oil. The tracks themselves are hard to see. Many were taken and sold, and others eventually erode away, but we got to see quite a number. This earth cache was the first of the day.

Then we went into Glen Rose itself and had lunch, then saw another track and the old Post Office, which was a tiny log cabin. This was another cache. Then we got our first real cache at Big Rocks State Park. This involved climbing over the Big Rocks and bending down through the thorns and the thick branches, but the cache was worth it at the end.

And so on to Tyler. We stopped at a cemetery near Keene and got three caches along the way, but mostly it was a direct shot. In Tyler we checked in, then went for 11 caches along a nearby road. When we didn't find the first two, we nearly gave up, but then we began to find them.

We saw a roosting place there for white ibises and what looks like the white phase of a russet egret (I noticed the crests). We've also seen black vultures.We didn't even know there were such things.

There was another dog at one cache who came and lay at my feet. So far three dogs have come up to us and wanted to be taken home. All are owned, though today's might be lost. You chase them off so they don't get run over, and they look so SAD.

We realized when we got back to the motel about 8 that on Sunday, the steak house was closed and all the restaurants seem to be the other side of town. We went to the nearby Cajun seafood place and were able to get takeout, but the flatware packs they gave us were defective and I didn't get a fork. Grumble.

Yesterday I really noticed the grackles in Ft. Worth. They've found nirvana and don't migrate any more.

So 0bama gave his speech. You happy, Father H.?

It looks as if [0bama] succeeded in co-opting the Catholic church, and in portraying pro-life people as name callers with closed minds. Well-played, but...