Wandering Through Waco

I was Magnolia-cool, long before Magnolia was even a thing. You’ll have to read to the bottom to find out how...

We arrived in Waco, Texas today.  Waco.  If you’re old enough, you will remember the 1993 standoff between federal agents and members of the Branch Davidian cult who were barricaded in their compound they called Mount Carmel.  It didn’t end well.  Several federal agents were killed, several more cult members were killed, and the standoff ended when fire erupted from the compound in several places, resulting in the deaths of most of the remaining cult members inside the compound.  The name Waco should have been pronounced Whacko based on the bizarre nature of the things that went on there.

We did not come to Waco to see Mount Carmel.

You won’t see or read any mention of these events anywhere.  Not in the literature, not in the guide books, not on the maps.  Nothing.  Nada.  

Instead, people come from all over to see the handiwork of Chip and Joanna Gaines, whose Magnolia brand springs up everywhere here and is a big part of this town. The investments they have poured into this area have been a big part of reinventing this city into a tourist destination, even being named the Number 2 travel destination for 2018 in TripAdvisor’s Choice awards for Destinations on the Rise.  It was second place only to Kapaa, Hawaii.

This is what we came to see.

First priority was to get something good to eat.  And they know this.  The bakery is the first building you see when entering the compound.  It worked on us.  We came away with a cupcake and a cinnamon roll.  Delicious delectable to be devoured without delay.

The main attraction is the Silos at Magnolia, a compound converted from the old Brazos Valley Cotton Oil Mill.  The iconic silos and accompanying buildings were converted into a retail space and bakery, with a lot of the old features of the mill remaining.  A courtyard in the compound houses several food trucks and there are several buildings featuring the Gaines’ curated stuff for sale.

They do have a knack for design and an eye for detail and, as we strolled around the stores, particularly the store offering home furnishings,  Deb was constantly telling me to take a picture of some design element that she found interesting.  I have a lot of pictures from today.

Joanna Gaines had an eye for decorating with simple things, things you may not think of as a decorating element.  Like dice in a bowl.  Or Dominoes in a bowl.

Another Thing-in-a-bowl was matchbooks.  Remember matchbooks?  These matchbooks were everywhere in this store: bowls, brass boxes, curio cabinets.

Deb looked at me and said, “I should have never made you get rid of your matchbook collection.”   Indeed I had a couple shopping bags full of matchbooks I had collected over several years, some of them very artistic in shape and size and color, each one telling a story.  So I was Magnolia-cool decades before Joanna Gaines thought to use matchbooks as a decorating element.  I had enough matchbooks to decorate a small city.

But I’m not cool any more.  I don’t have a single one left.

We had lunch from the food trucks in the courtyard.  Deb had Bulgogi Chicken, and I had a burger in which the patty was half ground beef and half ground bacon.  Wow, did that pack a punch!  Probably the most flavorful burger I have ever experienced.  And probably the most caloric.  And I was getting hungry by that time so I ordered a double.  That lasted me the rest of the day.

We went to check out the Waco Mammoth National Monument, where several fossils of Columbian Mammoths were unearthed.  We didn’t take the paid tour which goes by the fossil beds, but did some hiking around the park and we looked at the displays.  Lots of big bones, lots of conjecture about what they actually looked like and how they got here to Texas.  And that conjecture is shaped largely by your worldview.

We took bike ride over the dam which created Waco Lake.  This is a nearly 3-mile earthen dam which has a nice walking/biking trail on the top.  Great views of the lake and parts of the town, and even glimpses of some limestone cliffs at one edge of the town.

After a brief stop at Cameron Park, we ended up downtown again, along the Brazos River.  The city has done a nice job creating a river walk along both sides of the river, so we walked this for a while with the remaining daylight.

This walk includes the Waco Suspension Bridge. Built in 1870, it was the only path across the river for quite a number of years and it saw a wide variety of traffic, including regular cattle drives.  A sculpture on one side of the bridge commemorates this.

Finally, as darkness fell, we hit the road again, driving for another hour and a half and stopping for the night at a Cracker Barrel just south of Fort Worth, Texas.