Adventure and things of interest can be just a short stretch down the road as my sister and I experienced a few weekends ago. We set out for Archer City, Texas with our final goal of visiting Larry McMurtry’s sprawling bookshop named “Booked Up’ to peruse our way through the more than 200,000 tomes he has ensconced there.
Along the way we made a stop at America’s newest designated park, the Mammoth National Monument. At this location near Waco, two young boys exploring a creek bed saw an interesting outcropping and the discovery was made of a huge femur bone which was identified as belonging to a Columbian Mammoth that lived approximately 55,000 years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch which spanned 2.5 million years to 10,000 years ago. Upon further investigation, excavation determined that their find was indeed a momentous one…a nursery herd of these Mammoths had apparently been caught in a flash flood thousands of years ago. Our young tour guide who expertly educated us on our tour, poured a wealth of knowledge into us about these huge creatures that roamed this part of Texas. Fourteen feet high at the shoulder and approximately the size of a regular sized yellow school bus, they wandered through a grassland of six-foot high grasses accompanied by camels who it is theorized shared a symbiotic relationship with the mammoths. As she explained, the Mammoths had extremely poor vision and possibly couldn’t identify real predators from grass blowing in the wind while the camels had excellent vision and became the alarm system for these huge mammals. Absolutely worth the visit if your path brings one near.
We pushed forward to check in at our home away from home for the next two nights, the Spur Hotel in Archer City. Built in 1928, it has been totally renovated and offers eleven rooms that are reminiscent of how hotel rooms must have been in the olden days…small, cozy with homemade quilts adorning the beds but thankfully, a completely modern bathroom. We ate at Murn’s directly across from our hotel, obviously a beloved local watering hole and eatery for all Archer City residents. A long but enjoyable day and we collapsed into our beds to rest up for the piece de resistance of our day trip…Booked Up!
Being a true bibliophile, a visit to this bookstore, is the equivalent of stepping into book heaven. The main room is climate controlled and this is where the rare and expensive books are housed. Connected to this main room is a warehouse and an annex, not climate controlled, so very cold. It was a treasure hunt because the thousands of books were loosely categorized into sections (birds, poetry, civil war, history, mysteries, etc.) labeled by scraps of paper. Within those categories it was every man for himself because they were NOT alphabetized by author which made it virtually impossible to find any one certain book. To make matters even more challenging, there are at least three other buildings filled with books. It is a work in progress and that progress is apparently an extremely slow one. All that being said, I still managed to find some book treasures that I couldn’t live without after four hours of searching up and down, floor-to-ceiling aisles of books.
Literally we were on a quest for buried book treasures and along the way enjoyed the camaraderie of a shared sister experience. Adventure can be discovered close to home so make the time, book the reservation and make it happen. So worth it!!
Happy booking!
ginnybirdbeakspeak 