Bevin has a friend on Facebook who spent Christmas in Ireland, TX. We didn't know there was an Ireland, TX and it got us to thinking, "Wouldn't it be great to tell everyone we've been to Ireland?" And then we thought, "What if we went to Dublin first, THEN Ireland?! We could tell everyone we did Dublin/Ireland this weekend!" Go puns! We looked up both cities on the map; it'd be a stretch to hit both in a day and see all the sights, though Ireland's designation as a ghost town makes the list of attractions shorter than usual. Since Dublin is closer, we decided to go there and save Ireland for later.
After a late start and a quick shot through Ft. Worth, we finally got to 281 and found our first stop of the day rather unexpectedly! About a mile south of the I-20/US 281 interchange is the Texas Hill Country Furniture and Mercantile, home of the Star of Texas Cedar Rocker, which happens to be THE largest cedar rocking chair in the world!
This place is a really cool find! The owner/proprietor makes most of the furniture in the Mercantile, much of it from cedar and mountain pine. There's even a bathtub made of solid mesquite that took nearly a 1000 man hours to complete. It's fully functional and stands on hand carved horse hooves. Too bad they don't let anyone take pictures inside...
Right next door is the Natty Flat Smokehouse, where you can get every smoked meat known to man, fresh cobbler with Blue Bell on top, and lots of different kinds of preserves/syrups/jams from all around the area. We waited behind a few nice, old ladies out day-tripping across central Texas. I sampled some of the jalepeno jelly while perusing the menu, fantastic! Bevin ended up getting the pulled pork sandwich while I went with the smoked bolonga. Before eating this sandwich, "baloney" was a cheap meat fit for college students and poor drunkards. This thick cut slice of meat was no such thing! It had been over the heat all day, soaking up all the woody flavor the old cook out back could throw at it. I took it in with zeal!
We finished quickly, without desert sadly enough, but Dublin was calling! There was a little confusion on my part about distances when we made it to Stephenville. Bevin had done all the navigation work, and the driving for that matter, I was strictly along for the ride! But it was taking too long. What if we got lost, took a wrong turn? This was a college town just after New Year's, if these savage bastards smelled fresh meat, anything could happen!
My fears were unfounded. Bevin got us to Dublin in fine fashion, just 20 minutes before the next tour at the Dr. Pepper bottling plant. That place was awesome! It's the oldest DP bottling plant in America, putting out anywhere from 2 to 3 thousand bottles of the good stuff every other week. Much of the machinery is from the 20's and 30's. When something breaks down, they have to scrounge a part from storage or manufacture a new piece. They still use bottles that people bring in to them from garage sales and antique stores, some from the 1960's even! The tour costs $2.50 a person, lasts about 40 minutes and you get a free bottle of fresh brewed Dr. Pepper along the way! Bevin even took picures in place we weren't allowed to, like the picture below...
Old Doc's Soda Shop is attached to the bottling company and housed in the original bottling room. Bevin got all kinds of nice pictures there too! Naturally you can get DP served up just about anyway you want it, even hot! They also make nice sandwiches, PB&J, etc. We bought a bottle opener, some DP Jelly Belly jelly-beans for my boss, a shot glass, a coozie, and a case of Dublin Dr. Pepper in 8 oz bottles! Technically, since we brought the bottles home from outside of the bottling plant's 44 mile distribution radius, we're bootleggers! But I don't think anyone will be chasing us down over it.
We then took in the Dublin museum, which had many great local artifacts from the town's history and visited Three Sister's boutique, a nice store selling all kinds of things any passerby could want. We dined at Babe's in Grandbury and headed home to a very anxious Ruby. All in all, it was a very good day!
What a great day trip!! Y'all are such a blast!
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