October 2025: Vampires & Venomous Snakes

Holy moly, you guys, October was insane! 😱

There was so much going on that this is just going to have to be an incredibly long post.

The Origin of the Texas Quest

I think it makes sense to start off this whole story with a bit of an explanation.

Why was I going to Texas in the first place?

A friend from Australia was going to be Stateside, and had suggested that a bunch of us in an online group get together in Dallas in November to meet in person.

At the outset, it looked like maybe a handful of us would make the trip. So, I decided that’s where I’d head toward over the next couple months.

I’d never been to Texas.

I was going to be driving out to Las Vegas in January for a February work conference, so it seemed like good practice for that trip.

Pit Stop in Pittsburgh

As everyone knows, it is highly inefficient to set out for Texas by heading East from Ohio to Pennsylvania.

So, of course, that’s exactly how I started off.

I went to visit some friends.

The day I got there, I took a walk and found this sign:

Groundhogs are so pervasive in Ohio (and presumably Pennsylvania) that I thought it was funny that someone would use signage on them.

Other things I enjoyed in PA were the white Bindweed and white latte flowers:

Haunted Ohio

I was going to drive from Pittsburgh to Kentucky, but ended up on a quick side quest back in Cleveland for a day or two.

I had just been at an Audubon potluck on Kelleys Island where we saw a presentation on invasive species, so I thought this Halloween decoration was clever:

I especially liked that they had a Ghostbusting exterminator (left).

Kentucky Kookiness

Next I drove to Kentucky.

Also, a Nittle Dude gave me an awesome sticker, which promptly went on my new guitar and remains there today:

Jim Panzee of the Grumpy Monkey Book Series

Illinois in Autumn

Then, I made my way to Illinois.

Illinois was beautiful.

Some friends had invited me to come to visit during Vampire Movie Weekend at the local drive-in theater, and I couldn’t pass on that.

It’s not that I’m a great fan of vampires.

(Actually, I realized that I hardly knew any of the lore surrounding them before the movie night.)

I was more going to hang out with said friends, and have the bonus of getting to see what I thought of vampire movies in general.

We saw a back-to-back feature of Fright Night and The Lost Boys.

Not those Lost Boys.

I liked them both quite a lot.

I got a chili cheese dog and nachos.

It was a great night.

A panoramic view of the drive-in theater, complete with the last of the sunset on the left and

grain silos (or something of that nature) on the right.

But, I know, I know:

Enough about vampire movies.

You all are dying for some tree pictures, aren’t you?

Well, I hope that’s the case, because I have a lot of them.

It was early October and Fall was finally starting to arrive.

I wanted to soak in as much of it as I could, since I was headed South and didn’t know how much the leaves changed color down there.

This was one of the first fully-red trees I saw on my trip:

Then, even more unexpected, there was a scale-replica of the Golden Gate Bridge here for some reason.

It was a fun curiosity:

After that, I found this giant, hollowed-out stump. An inside photo didn’t really capture the depth to show just how massive it was, but the moss on the old, weathered wood was cool enough to feature:

Next, the tree in the photo below on the left had a little hole in the bottom, so you could see through to the other side.

I don’t know about you guys, but I always want to carry little leather sacks of gold coins with me to stash in trees like this.

And there were these weird little acorn caps that had hair-lookin’ things growing out of them.

A little googling indicates that these may be Bur Oak acorns.

Whatever the case, I think they’d make funny hats for acorn men.

Another curiosity on the same walk. There was a Halloween display at the Botanical Gardens,

and this, “D’oh!” checkers skeleton made me laugh.

I also found some shelf mushrooms that were the most pancake-looking mushrooms I’d ever seen:

I wonder if these are edible…and, if so, what they would taste like with syrup…

Road Trippin’ It Through Missouri

This was actually the first leg of my journey where I was going on as direct a route to my final destination as possible.

On October 16th, I spent most of the day driving through Missouri.

Camera footage of crossing into Missouri from Illinois.

I’d flown to St. Louis once for a work trip, but I’d never gotten to see so much of the state.

It was a sunny day and an easy drive.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the trip was this General Store called “Ozarkland”.

It had a ton of signs advertising for it along the way, so I figured it was as good a place as any to stop for a quick break:

I walked in and saw a handful of other road-trippers, mostly little kids with their parents looking through barrels of old-fashioned candies.

I was greeted by Cowboy Dana Carvey, who was happy to provide samples of their different ice cream and chocolate flavors. The cobbler ice cream was excellent.

(It’s funny because I noticed that once I got into Missouri everybody who was working in retail was like they were from Chick-Fil-A: effusively kind and enthusiastic. I found this to be an agreeable change of pace.)

The aforementioned fudge-and-chocolates section was great, and I appreciated that they were not shy about providing samples.

This is the first place I’d ever heard of and tried Dubai chocolate.

While talking with the guys behind the counter, I mentioned I was en route to Texas; one of them said he was from Texas and recommended some places to check out if I had the chance.

I got an ice cream cone and some little trinkets to take to people back home, and then set out for the rest of the drive.

Yokohama…Yokohama…Yokohama…

My next stop was Oklahoma.

I really liked Oklahoma.

It was a lot greener and had more trees than I’d expected.

I was going to stop here for a couple nights and visit my cousin Jackie.

Jackie and Mike treated me to a homemade steak dinner with GIANT steaks, and I was glad to have the next day off before hitting the road for another 8+ hours again.

I decided to take that day off to explore Tulsa on a very silly side quest, which I’ve split into a separate post of its own:

The Biggest UHF Tour of Oklahoma

When I Became a Professional Magician

That next night, we went to Crossroads Cookery for dinner.

The food was great, and the architecture was very cool.

It’s an older building with high ceilings, patches of exposed brick, and a lot of old custom wooden furniture.

After dinner, we went upstairs to a little speakeasy to play pool.

It had a laid-back vibe, and there was a guy playing acoustic guitar.

This group of two couples, maybe in their late 60s or so, came up a bit later.

I had shown Mike and Jackie a couple of card tricks, and Mike said I should do them for those people and he’d introduce me.

So, all of a sudden I found myself being introduced and doing a few tricks for them.

They seemed to really enjoy it.

First of all, the one lady gave me a big hug.

Then, her husband said, “I’d give you a hug, too, but I’m afraid I’d lose my billfold.”

Quite a compliment, haha.

On the Road Again

The next morning, I left early to drive from Tulsa to just West of Houston.

My car passed the 200,000-mile mark on this trip.

The drive was a bit more of an adventure than I’d bargained for.

The winds picked up and the sky got very dark.

I did not see a tornado but at one point, as the wind was kicking up debris along the road despite the heavy rain, I wondered if I would.

We don’t get those kinds of winds back home.

Texas: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

I had really been looking forward to going to Texas.

When I was a kid there was this family in my church that would put on these parties for the elementary-school students about once every month or so where we’d study a different State.

I remember the Texas one well.

It seemed like this far-away land of cowboys and Indians, and wide-open fields.

So, I thought I’d enjoy every minute of the trip.

The summary version of this is that I had a really unpleasant dog-sitting gig for the first 10 days, and I think that soured the rest of it.

I won’t go into much of that because I don’t think it’s worth the space, but suffice it to say that Texas is probably great.

I just didn’t like it as much as I’d expected because I was incredibly low on sleep.

All that said, the people from Texas that I got to meet up with were amazing, and I still got to do and see a ton of cool things.

I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I felt that I should have.

Silly things, expectations…

So Many Buc-ee’s

But before the sleep-deprivation part, I had a good drive down.

There were three Buc-ee’s on the way to my first stop in Texas.

I hit up all three of them.

I was introduced to Buc-ee’s for the first time in March of this year, and decided back then that it required its own post.

You can read all about it here (which includes photos and commentary from the Texas trip):

Buc-ee’s: A Bizarre Slice of American Excess (but I Like It)

The Bad and Ugly

When I got into town, it was 95°F/35°C and humid as all get out.

I was staying about 30 minutes West of Houston, and tried to go for walks earlier in the morning or later in the evening in order to avoid the midday heat.

Which, in my opinion, was way too hot for the second half of October.

There were some pretty things to see around the neighborhood in spite of the heat, ‘though.

And some ugly things.

Like snakes.

Like snakes that poke their heads out from underneath the sidewalk while you’re out for a morning jaunt.

I think snakes are okay indoors and confined, but out in the wild I am particularly not fond of them.

One night I was walking and found a newly-roadkilled cottonmouth snake (you can click to see it here if you’re curious, but be warned that there are guts and it is super gross).

A much less off-putting snake picture.

From then on I was extra cautious about where I stepped when I was out for walks.

The tall, pokey grass was creepier to me now.

As for more pleasant reptiles, I ran into this little guy who tried to sell me some car insurance:

#noFilter

So, I was in a giant suburban jungle in the middle of nowhere and it was kinda lonely.

As mentioned before, I was low on sleep.

And maybe a week or so into that gig I found out that the friend’s get-together in Dallas was not going to happen after all.

It was around this time that I also started to evaluate my upcoming work trip to Vegas in a couple months.

I didn’t want to drive out to Vegas.

That’s twice as far as Texas.

And after doing the math, I realized that it would actually be smarter to skip the conference and invest that money elsewhere.

I decided that where I really wanted to be for the winter was Kelleys Island, so I started to take steps to get there.

In the meantime, I had another two and a half weeks of being in Texas.

I did what I could to make the most of it.

The Good

Then I went to visit some friends in Houston.

When they say everything is bigger in Texas, they mean it.

I turned down one street and saw this crazy Halloween display that looked like it took up half a block. 👀

I actually turned back to snag this dash-cam footage because I wasn’t sure a regular picture would do it justice.

In retrospect, I’m not even sure the dash-cam footage does it justice. 🤔

Anyway, I had a great time visiting my friends in Houston and getting to see some of the local scenery.

My one friend took me on a drive through downtown where they had these Hobbit-hole tunnels, and a very pretty drive full of trees on the Rice University campus.

One night we went to Treebeards for dinner, where I was introduced to a dish called “Etouffee” that was kinda like a soupy shrimp gumbo.

It (and the chocolate cake for dessert) was delicious.

I also appreciated that, although this wasn’t a reference to Lord of the Rings it still kinda felt like one.

Here’s me being totally cool and nonchalant at the entrance:

And inside, near one of the many many neat displays there:

Just another picture of me being a total goober at NASA.

He lived at least some time not far from where I’m from in Ohio, was very kind, and let me get my picture with him:

Me (left) and Bob Springer (right) at Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, Florida, February 2023

So, when I found his crew photo in Houston it was one of those full-circle moments.

Speaking of circles, circling back to October…

Since I was a passenger on this particular outing, I was able to get a pretty good shot of the city as we drove back from NASA:

That night was Halloween, and I got invited to some other friends’ house for dinner.

We walked around the neighborhood with their kiddos to get candy, then handed out candy to other kids.

To finish the night there, we had homemade gumbo. 🤤

I had just rewatched Beetlejuice and kept thinking about the shrimp hands, which seemed appropriate.

Finally, I went back to my other friends’ house and passed out candy to more trick-or-treaters to wrap up the night.

Photo Story of the Month

This isn’t an amazing photo or anything, but I had a story that didn’t really fit in with the rest of the blog, so I’m hijacking this space to tell it.

You know…since this hasn’t been long enough already. 😅

It was 2019.

My grandma had moved up to a nursing home in Ohio, and I wanted to take her out on a trip.

The Cleveland Zoo was doing a Chinese Lantern Festival and, although her eyes weren’t so good at this point, I thought she probably could see the big inflatable “lanterns” on display.

It amazed me what a big deal she made of how pretty the sky was when we were driving there.

It did look like a painting that evening.

The sky, later that night

But it struck me how few opportunities she’d had to see much of the sky since she’d been stuck primarily indoors (or in little courtyards) for years at that point.

It’s crazy the things we take for granted that may be a big deal to us someday.

Well, anyway, it was a funny adventure.

We were standing right in front of the lantern displays, and some of them she could see while others she seemed unable to tell where she ought to look.

(Colors seemed to play into this.)

One of her favorite displays didn’t even have much lighting to it:

An entire palace made of China dishes, which Grandma liked quite a lot.

So, we continued along and I wondered how well she could make out the shapes of the lanterns.

But then we passed a monochromatic display in bright yellowy-orange, and she went:

“Oh, the terracotta warriors!”

And followed that up, in a matter-of-fact tone that still makes me laugh, with:

“I saw the real ones in China.”

And suddenly it hit me how strange it was: the juxtaposition of Grandma’s actually-exotic trips throughout her career as a travel agent with this little outing to the zoo.

So, when I saw that billboard in Houston I chuckled at the memory and decided it was worth sharing with you all.

Grandma with the Terracotta Warriors, Chinese Lantern Festival at the Cleveland Zoo, 2019

October Stats

Books Finished

Locke & Key, Vol. 1: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill

Library Cards Collected

3

Distance Travelled (Miles)

2188

Miles Walked

10.87 – I did not record many of the miles I walked this month.

Song of the Month