Forbidden Gardens of Katy, Texas. Terra Cotta Replica Chinese Soldiers. June 20, 2009

Forbidden Gardens of Katy, Texas is an amazing replica of the famous site in China where Emperor Qin buried over 8,000 terra cotta statues replicating his army for the afterlife.

Here I sit (in the Texas sun) in front of the main pit. There are several thousand 1/3 scale fiberglass raplicas here and it is quite amazing to see.

A little seen view from behind the Emperor as he surveys his army. Since nobody was around I figured it was OK to scamper around the hillsides a bit for some different views.

The detail was amazingly individualistic and precise on each of the men.

Also on the site is a huge miniature Forbidden City, thankfully fully covered and in the shade!For many more larger images and a lot more detail see the photos page.

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Topiary Garden In Houston, Texas. A Huge, FREE, And Little Visited Attraction!

We recently visited a free Houston attraction that most people just zip by as fast as possible, maybe saying "Hey kids, look at the animal plants", never thinking how cool it might be to slow down and smell the topiary.On Buffalo Speedway (which is actually a residential street, not much of a speedway) there is a small nursery named River Oaks Plant House. On the center median of the street they have planted and maintain a HUGE assortment of beautiful topiary figures. An excellent free attraction and great advertising for the nursery.

Nephew Brecken getting crazy on a baby elephant. Hmmm, did they want kids riding these? Well, there were no signs saying not to!

An elephant herd ambles down a Houston street.

Sister Merry, Brecken, and Niece Tiffany.Who do they think they are, a rock group or something?

A baby elephant balances on a ball. Cool.

An entire block of topiary animals are there to enjoy, Be careful of the always-in-a-hurry-don't-they-realize-Wal-Mart-is-open-24-hours traffic!

A winged horse or dragon attempting to rise up from old Terra Firma!

Did I mention the bargain prices. Magical gardens take one of two things. Lots of money or lots of work!

This topiary golfer looked very bright and charming in the distance but at this angle he seems to be a crazy killer intent on clubbing me to death!Click here to check out much larger images!

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Alan Around The World Invitations, Facebook, Twitter, Feedburner

I'm not Lance Armstrong and have no killer mileage or distance bicycling goals for my around-the-world trip. The real goal is to see as much as possible and to meet as many people as I can. I want to live more like the locals live, to have some adventures, and experience the world on a personal basis, as a traveler, not a tourist.

One of the ways I hoped to make this possible
was to start the blog and a Facebook page and it seems to be working great. I don't leave for a while still and already I have had almost 200 people join me as a friend on Facebook. Almost thirty of these friends have offered everyting from lunch to a place to pitch my tent to a place to stay and shower. Locations range from nearby cities in Texas to Alaska, from Germany to The Maldives Islands, from Turkey to Shanghai, China.
Check out the ever changing Invitations Map to see where I have been offered a place to stay.
Visit my Facebook or Twitter accounts and sign up to stay in touch.
Use Feedburner to get e-mail updates when I post.
E-mail me at AlanAroundTheWorld@GMail.com to stay in touch.
Several folks have also been kind enough to donate some funds to enable the trip a bit. For the first three I thought it would be fun to name my three water bottles after the donors and track them around the world! Might be fun to see if they make it all the way or end up with a bad leak in Italy...If you have any questions, advice, invitations or ideas let me know.I also think when the new bike gets here I will name it. Send any name suggestions to me and I might just put together a small poll to choose the name for the soon to be worldy bicycle.Looking forward to meeting you out on the road!Alan Mizell

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Beer Can House, Houston, Texas.

The Beer Can House in Houston, Texas was created by John Milkovisch starting in the late 1960's. John began saving beer cans before anyone else thought of recycling them, but instead of selling them he covered his entire home with the aluminum cast-offs. He also cemented the yard and turned it into a mosaic of art details. When questioned as to why he did this he said “I got sick of mowing the grass.” As a teenager who despised grass cutting in those same years this man whould have been, to me, the perfect father.

Here I am in a shot that looks like I am the visionary creator of this artwork. This is the photo of me that would appear in some weekly alternative newspaper celebrating the genius of my vision. I have always thought it would be very cool to be the cranky old man who makes some odd folk art house and sticks his finger in the eye of the art world, but every time I start to cover my apartment building in aluminum cans the property manager calls me with angry words!

Located at 222 Malone in an otherwise sedate, even a bit high-end neighborhood, near Houston's fabulous Memorial Park, you can drive by at anytime. The sign says there are visiting hours on the weekend and the home is maintained by a local art foundation so it probably isn't going anywhere. Very cool.

Like many of these folk art creations the details of a life of creation are too numerous to take in all at once. Beer can tops linked together create the front gate to the home and provide one of endless photo opportunity details.
For many more and much larger images of the Beer Can House visit the Alan Around The World photo page!

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Bats! 250,000 Mexican Freetail Bats Beneath A Houston, Texas Bridge! With Video!

250,000 BATS!Beneath the bridge on Waugh Street that crosses the Buffalo Bayou in Houston, Texas lives a large colony of Mexican Freetail bats. Each night at dusk, every night of the year, the bats stream from their home beneath the bridge and spread out over Houston to devour millions of mosquitoes and other bugs. With so many mosquitoes out at night I shudder to imagine the city without this and other colonies that exist in hidden nooks and crannies.

Here my family walks beneath
the bridge to the best viewing area on the west side of the bridge. You might want to walk over the bridge at dusk as the bats are becoming active and there is a good chance of getting droppings in your hair.

Bat guano, as the poop is called, coats the angled concrete beneath the bridge. The bats make a home in narrow expansion joints that exist in the concrete beneath the bridge, hiding above and behind the rusty reinforcing mesh. A safe home for one of Houston's best assets.Guano makes excellent fertilizer they say. Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and other caves were mined for years to supply bat poop to farmenrs.

The bridge is easly accessed as it is just off of Allen Parkway, the same road that hosts the Art Car Parade. On this night there were two dozen people with wine, cheese, the kids, and blankets spread on the grass. The city even constructed an overlook platform for easy viewing, though most folks go down the Bayou's banks to get a closer view.As the sun sets Houston shows off a cotton candy colore sky.

Believe me it's hard to carch good bat pix with a 90 dollar camera. This shot shows them pretty well as frenetic blurs in the darkening sky. Folks stand on the bridge and watch though staring down into the darkness is not the best view.Watch this 90 second video for a better look at the swirl of bats. They all head west as if an invisible tunnel, a seemingly endless stream of black streaks in the sky. We left after a half-hour. There are only so many bats you can watch before you decide it may never end!

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Dollar Store Shopping In Houston, Texas!

Some people fly to Paris to shop for the latest fashions but Houston offers those on a tighter budget somethhing special - a huge number of stores selling things for about a dollar. Believe it or not when my family came to my daughter's recent graduation one of the things that was high on their list of things to do was a visit to the .99 cent store. If you haven't been in one do not jump to conclusions. They do have an astounding assortment of things for less than a buck and it's hard to walk out without a full cart. It's amazing how a dollar here and a dollar there turns into a large bill at the cash register.

Tiffany looking fancy in her new .99 cent sunglasses. One thing I noticed was that this store used to sell everything for .99 cents but now it's actually 99.99 cents, a miniscule increase in price that must become meaningful only on a huge scale. That extra almost penny adds up if you sell a hundred million of something!

Brecken is totally .99 cent cool in his new shades. Check back in coming days to see much more interesting Houston attractions such as the amazing topiary plants on Buffalo Speedway, plants that are grown to look like horses, dragons, elephants, and much more.
Sister Merry must have footed the bill. Look at that receipt. It's full of dollar stuff.Other upcoming posts will show the famous Beer Can House on Malone, my daughter's graduation, and 250,000 bats with video, all leaving their home under the Waugh Street bridge as they do every night. Very cool.Come back often and read these "practice" travel-around-Houston posts before the trip begins.

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