Visiting Hico, Texas - bad start but a good finish

The next stop on our journey south was the little town of Hico, Texas. We've driven through this town for years, pronouncing it with a Spanish accent as Hee-Koh. But now that we live here, we know that instead of Spanish roots, this town was named after a town in the east and is pronounced High-Koh. 

As Texas residents, our vehicles must be safety inspected every year--or within ten days after Texas full-timers return to the state. Our vehicles have to pass that inspection in order to renew their registration each year. Mark found this little shop in Hico to get our motor home checked, assuming that it would be a five minute stop. But that's how we found out that our blinker and brake lights weren't operating correctly! This stop in Hico has gotten off to a bad start!

We headed to our camping spot at the Hico City park, where Mark started working on the lights. Since Denisa isn't much help in these situations, she poked around the campground. She was very excited to see that the huge trees that canopy the park were filled with pecan pods. The pecans have fallen to the ground, and they were everywhere! It's no secret that Mark is the fixer, and Denisa is nutty. So while Mark worked on the lights, Denisa was going nuts picking up pecans.

Our day ended better than it started. Mark found the electric short among the miles of wiring in the motor home. Denisa is sure proud to be married to a man that can fix things! Even though we were already set up in the campground, we returned to Jackson's Auto Parts to get that safety inspection. We rewarded ourselves with a delicious piece of coconut cream pie from the Koffee Kup in Hico. They have quite a reputation for having 17 kinds of pie on their menu, and we will confirm that this piece was delicious!

This tiny town also has a chocolate shop, a bakery, and a popcorn store. With snack options like that, this is our kind of town! They also have a statue and museum honoring one of their most famous citizens, Billy the Kid. Even though most western history accounts say that the Kid died in a shoot-out in 1881 in New Mexico, our little town says that he survived and moved to Hico, Texas. Here he renamed himself Brushy Bill Roberts and lived to the ripe old age of 90.  

We like our new little home town, but the main reason we are camped here is to visit another Texas state park. Dinosaur Valley State Park is about 30 miles away, and we made reservations to visit. Because of Covid, Texas state parks are limiting the number of people that can visit each day. They recommend making an on-line reservation to insure you will be allowed into this popular park.

Two life-sized dinosaurs guard the entrance of the park. Mark got his picture with the friendly apatosaurus, while Denisa had to pose by the vicious Tyrannosaurus Rex. While these two are some of the best known of all dinosaurs, they did not ever live here in Texas. These statues were actually made for the World's Fair in New York City in 1964, and paid for by Sinclair Oil Company. When Sinclair dropped their dino logo, the Texas governor persuaded the company to donate them to the new state park.

The dinosaurs that actually lived here in central Texas were the Acrocanthosaurus--a 40-foot long carnivore,

and the Sauroposeidon--a 70 feet long plant-eater. Weighing in at 44,000 pounds, this dinosaur would make some deep tracks when it walked in the muddy river beds. We are here to see those actual tracks made millions of years ago.

In the bed of the Paluxy River, visitors can look down to see the three-toed tracks of a Sauroposeidon that walked here long ago.

We also found the round prints of the Sauroposeidon, but they were less impressive than the characteristic three-toed prints of the smaller dinosaur.

The best tracks are roped off, but there are dinosaur tracks all over the park. In the summer when the river is almost dry, visitors can literally walk where the dinosaurs left their foot prints. On this nippy January morning we were content to see the prints from afar through the water. But looking at areas like "the ballroom," it is obvious that these two dinosaurs were waltzing all over this river bed. We crossed the river a couple times on make-shift bridges,

and meandered along the Paluxy River to see more dinosaur tracks. 

We would eventually have to shed our coats as we made a 5-mile loop around the park. At times we were up high on the rock ledges, with a view of Dinosaur Valley State Park stretching out in front of us.

Our loop took us back beside the dinosaur statues, where Mark thought Denisa should have a frightened look for a picture with a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's here that we discovered that Denisa is just no good at looking frightened. He said, "NO!" to this attempt at a frightened look.

Nope!

Not even close!

So we obviously had a good time during our stay in Hico. Even though we had a bad start, we had a good finish!