Quick trip to Tyler

Rebecca had a 3-day weekend off work, so we took a trip to a part of Texas we hadn't seen before. Friday morning we drove to Tyler in east Texas. After a typical Southern lunch of fried catfish at Cracker Barrel, we went to Caldwell Zoo. They had lions and zebras roaming through the East Africa exhibit, otters, white tigers, alligators, and lots of birds.

Then we toured Tyler Municipal Rose Garden. It has over 35,000 rose bushes with nearly 500 different varieties of roses.

We dropped our luggage off at Rosevine Inn, a bed and breakfast where we spent the night, then rushed to the local theater where we caught the new Indiana Jones movie. Afterward we ate a pizza with the most toppings ever at Bruno's Pizza.

Saturday morning we headed east to Kilgore, home of East Texas Oil Museum. The main part of the museum is a full-scale town of stores, people, animals, and machinery depicting life in a depression era oil boom town.

Before heading home we toured a pre-Civil War mansion, the Goodman Museum, which still has the original furniture, dishes and clothing of the family who lived there.