Families, school classes and scout troops won’t want to miss visiting the vintage WWII naval aircraft carrier that is now situated as a floating museum in Corpus Christi, Texas. The USS Lexington has had an illustrious career, and holds the distinction of having the longest term of continuous use and longest list of records set, more than any other aircraft carrier in the US Navy since it was commissioned in 1943.

The USS LEXINGTON was de-commissioned when the USS FORRESTAL replaced it as the Navy’s training center in 1991; it was brought to Corpus Christi and opened as a naval aviation museum for the American public in October, 1992. The USS LEXINGTON Museum has always been self-sufficient, receiving no funds from local, state or federal government agencies, but relying on revenues from grants, donations, admissions, ship’s store sales, special events, and the youth overnight program.

Now known as the USS LEXINGTON Museum on the Bay, popular tours on the carrier include the hangar deck, officer’s quarters, sick bay, galley, flight deck and bridge. And visitors will see the Quad 40 millimeter anti-aircraft guns up close, as well as a restored F-14 fighter plan and a Huey Cobra helicopter.  Camping is available on board by advance reservation.

Besides the original and restored carrier equipment, there’s a high-tech flight simulator and an IMAX theater for real-life, thrilling flight deck  experiences.

USS LEXINGTON Museum on the Bay

2914 N. Shoreline Blvd

Corpus Christi, TX 78403

800-LADY LEX • 361-888-4873

Visit the USS Lexington’s website here http://www.usslexington.com

No, we’re not talking about a baseball team, we’re talking about the historic Texas Ranger Division, the world-famous law enforcement agency that has been solving crimes in the State of Texas since 1823. Texas Rangers provided protection in the Republic of Texas from 1836 – 1845, and with a brief exception immediately following the Civil War, have done so since Texas became a state. At the present time there are approximately 144 Texas Rangers serving the Texas Department of Public Safety as the State Bureau of Investigation from their present headquarters in Austin, Texas.

Since the beginning, Texas Rangers have been dispatched to investigate murders, squelch riots, make fugitive apprehensions, and serve as paramilitary forces when necessary. Two famous Texas Ranger apprehensions in the Old West include gunfighter John Wesley Hardin and the infamous bank robbers, murderers, and car thieves, Bonnie and Clyde.

The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame in Waco, Texas is located near the site of the original Texas Ranger Fort Fisher, established in 1837. Here visitors will see guns, rifles, Indian artifacts and western art on display. The entire Museum compound includes the Homer Garrison, Jr. museum gallery, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame, the Texas Ranger Research Center and the Headquarters of Texas Rangers Company “F”. Students, authors and movie producers use the Research Center to portray authentic Texas Ranger and Old West garments and munitions.

Texas Ranger Hall of Fame

100 Texas Ranger Trail

Waco, TX 76706

254-750-8631

Museum Hours: Open 9 am – Close 5 pm Monday-Sunday; last Guest Admitted at 4:30 pm; Closed for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years & snow and ice.

Vist the Texas Ranger’s website here http://texasranger.org/

Named after a former state Lieutenant Governor, The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum opened in April of 2001. Funded by the Texas State Legislature and reviewed and approved by respected state historians, the high-tech museum offers numerous interactive exhibits, special effects and an IMAX theatre to provide a Texas experience that is larger than life.

The museum facilities have been thoughtfully and thoroughly designed to encourage use by school teachers and other groups of young people. Educators will find lesson plans and other helpful materials, as well as tour scheduling information

here http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/education/educatorguides.html

and here http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/visit/pdfs/School%20Confirmation%209-22-10.pdf

Families and school groups alike can benefit by advance planning, since there is so much to see and do on all three floors of the museum. The first floor exhibits feature the landscape and native inhabitants of the area long before it was known as Texas, through the time period of the Spanish and French explorers, through the year 1900 when the entire area known as Texas was had been completely mapped out.

The second floor of The Story of Texas Museum traces the adventures of many people and nations in the process of Texas becoming an independent nation. Military battles and political accomplishments are all depicted on a 60-foot video wall with continuous showings. And the third floor points to the economic opportunities throughout the years, and pointing towards the future of the State of Texas. Naturally, the importance of cattle ranching, oil production, space exploration, medicine and technology are featured. Visitors see and hear digital presentation of real people talking about their accomplishments and encouraging us all to our own accomplishments today.

The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum — The Story of Texas

1800 N. Congress Avenue

Austin, Texas

(512) 936-8746 in Austin or toll free (866) 369-7108

Plan your family or school visit here  http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/

Exhibits include various geological and climactic conditions, and include the Amazon exhibit with piranhas and poison frogs; a 400,000 gallon saltwater exhibit called Dolphin Bay, where trained dolphins perform for the crowd several times daily;  rehabilitated raptors, including a bald eagle named Grace, are exhibited in Eagle Pass;  jellyfish from the Gulf of Mexico float in an 800 gallon exhibit called Floating Phantoms;  stingrays inhabit the replicated coral reef where the Diver In The Water show takes place in the Flower Gardens exhibit; trained parrots, hawks, owls and falcons perform and provide wildlife education in the Hawn Wild Flight Theatre;  and the largest indoor exhibit replicates an oil platform and replicates the natural habitat surrounding real oil platforms in the Gulf, featuring sharks, barracudas and tarpons.  This is just a partial list of the remarkable diversity to be seen at the Texas State Aquarium during the following hours:

Open daily 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Labor Day through February 28)
Open daily 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. (March 1 until Labor Day)
Closed Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.

Texas State Aquarium
2710 N. Shoreline Blvd • Corpus Christi, TX 78402 • 1.800.477.GUL

See the vibrant website and make your travel plans here http://www.texasstateaquarium.org

It was back in 1839 when five mounted scouts rode across the Republic of Texas, looking for the perfect spot for a new capital city.  On the north bank of the Colorado River, in a central location, was a little settlement of four families called Waterloo. In September of 1839, fifty ox-drawn wagons hauled all the official furniture and records up from Houston and established the new capital called Austin among those original families in Waterloo.  Stephen F. Austin is known as the Father Of Texas because he took on the colonization efforts initiated by his father, and brought hundreds of families into Texas in the 1820s -1830s before he died, so it was a fitting honor to name the new capital in his honor.

The Texas State Capitol complex sprawls over 46 acres of landscaped grounds, and the centerpiece is the statehouse itself, constructed of native Texas Sunset Red granite. When the original capitol building that was built in 1853 burned to the ground in 1881, the existing granite building began construction in 1882 and completed in 1887. But when the zinc Goddess of Liberty statue was finally installed on top the capitol dome in 1888, the time had come to officially dedicate the new capitol building.

Visitors to the Texas Capitol are welcome on weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and weekends from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.  Hours are subject to change. Please call 512.463.0063 for extended hours during legislative sessions which occur for 140 days every odd numbered year beginning the second Tuesday in January.

The Capitol Information and Guide Service is open weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and weekends from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The helpful guides furnish information and conduct free 30-45 minute tours of the building.  Capitol tours are conducted every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day and Easter. Tours are given during the following hours:

Monday through Friday: 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Saturday: 9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Sunday: Noon – 3:30 p.m.

A thorough visitors guide can be found online here  http://www.tspb.state.tx.us/SPB/Plan/images/capitolwalkingtour_text.pdf

Beginning in 1963, Gemini IV was the first flight controlled from Houston, and then the Gemini program ended and the Apollo program began, having the original goal set by President Kennedy in 1961, of landing men on the Moon and returning them safely to earth prior to 1970.

The entire world watched television on July 20, 1969 as Neil Armstrong transmitted from the surface of the moon, “Houston, the Eagle has landed.” And then, a few hours later, he stepped down the ladder of the Lunar Module Eagle and spoke the now-famous words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” as he took those historic first steps on the surface of the moon.

In 1973, the Manned Spacecraft Center was renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center and has functioned as the heartbeat of the United States’ manned space flight program since that time. Controlling flights for the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz programs through the current Shuttle program, resident scientists, engineers, astronauts and dedicated staff members continue to operate the historic and cutting-edge facility.

The Center is the base of training for all the astronauts, and it is the site of Mission Control, where world-class flight controllers monitor all the operations in space, including development, production and delivery of the Space Shuttle orbiters; the testing of spacecraft associated systems; the development and integration of experiments for human space flight activities; supporting scientific engineering and medical research; and the selection and training of astronauts and the operation of human space flights.

The Center and NASA had no real public educational presence before Hal Stall, the director of Public Affairs at The Center, jump-started the Manned Space Flight Education Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Stall and his group wanted to provide a world-class facility where the public could come for a hands-on experience of the NASA space program, and they wanted to do so without using tax dollars to fund it. So, the Foundation got support from many corporate sponsors, and eventually $68.4 million in tax-exempt bonds were sold to the public to complete the financing endeavor.

The Foundation hired Walt Disney Imagineering, the design and master planning arm of the Walt Disney Company. In conjunction with BRC Imagination Arts as a collaborating designer, the Disney team generated the initial concepts that would become Space Center Houston.

The goal was for reasonable admission fees to fund the day-to-day operation of the Center, as well as provide for the Center’s massive educational program. Another goal was to create an environment that would appeal to visitors emotionally as well as intellectually, through their hearts and not just their minds.

Thousand of school-age students benefit from these programs every year, all designed to entertain and excite young visitors, while telling the true story of space exploration in a realistic way, not as science fiction.

Get connected with the Johnson Space Center here http://www.spacecenter.org/

In 1718, the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico authorized Father Antonio de Olivares to establish the mission that would play a major role in Texas history as it became known all over the world as The Alamo. The church structure began construction in 1755, and less than a century later, in 1836 it became the “Cradle of Texas Liberty”.

One of the most heroic struggles in history took place in the old mission from February 23 to March 6, 1836. Outnumbered by the better-equipped and better-organized Mexican army led by General Santa Anna, the famous defenders of Texas died to the last man. Now their names adorn street signs all over Texas as well as the nation as a whole.

All that remains of the original fort is the Chapel and the Long Barrack. The Alamo museum contains relics from the fort and offers tourists narrations of Alamo history.

The Alamo Cenotaph is a monument erected to memorialize the 189 heroes of the Alamo, and it stands in Alamo Plaza, with the names encircling it, carved into the marble; William Travis, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Sam Houston, to name a famous few.

See the live Alamo Cam and other historic and current information here http://www.the-alamo-san-antonio.com/

“Mean Joe” Greene (born 1946), College and Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers

Anna Nicole Smith (1967–2007), model, actress

Barbara Mandrell (born 1948), country singer

Barry White (1944–2003), soul singer and record producer

Billy Gibbons (born 1949), guitarist in ZZ Top

Boxcar Willie (Lecil Travis Martin) (1931–1999), country singer

Carol Burnett (born 1933), actress, comedian, singer, writer The Carol Burnett Show

Chris Cooper (born 1951), Oscar-winning actor, Seabiscuit, The Bourne Identity, The Patriot

Clint Black (born 1962), country music singer, raised in Houston

Clyde Barrow (1909–1934), Bonnie and Clyde, bank robbers

Dan Rather (born 1931), former CBS Evening News anchor

Dennis Rodman (born 1961), former NBA forward, who played primarily with the Detroit Pistons and the Chicago Bulls

Don Henley (born 1947), musician with rock group the Eagles

Dwight Eisenhower (1890–1969), 34th President of the United States (born in Denison, but raised in Kansas)

Earl Campbell (born 1955), Pro Football Hall of Famer, Heisman Trophy winner

Ernest Tubb (1914–1984), country singer-songwriter

George H.W. Bush (born 1924), Forty-first president of the United States

George Walker Bush (born 1946), Former Governor of Texas and former President of the United States, 2001-2010.

Grant Hill (born 1971), seven-time NBA All-Star small forward for the Phoenix Suns

Howard Hughes (1905–1976), aviator, filmmaker, eccentric billionaire

Janis Joplin (1943–1970), blues/rock singer

Jerry Jones (born 1942), billionaire entrepreneur, oilman, owner of Dallas Cowboys football team

Jimmy Dean (1928–2010), country singer, television personality, businessman

Lady Bird Johnson (1912–2007), former first lady (married to President Lyndon B. Johnson)

Lamar Hunt (1932–2006), founder of American Football League, Major League Soccer, North American Soccer League

Lance Armstrong (born 1971), cyclist, seven-time Tour de France winner

Larry Hagman (born 1931), actor, son of actress Mary Martin

Lee Harvey Oswald. assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Lyle Lovett (born 1957), singer-songwriter

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973), 36th President of the United States

Mark Cuban (born 1958), billionaire entrepreneur, owner of Dallas Mavericks basketball team

Mary Kay Ash (1918–2001), businesswoman and founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics

Michael Dell (born 1965), founder of Dell Inc.

Mickey Gilley (born 1936), country musician

Morgan Fairchild (born 1950), actress

Nolan Ryan (born 1947), Baseball Hall of Famer

Pat Green (born 1972), country singer-songwriter

Red Adair (1915–2004), offshore oil field firefighter

Rip Torn (born 1931), actor, cousin of Sissy Spacek

Robert M. Edsel (born 1956), nonfiction writer, oil company founder and innovator

Roger Staubach, Football star turned business titan

Sandra Day O’Connor (born 1930), former associate justice of the Supreme Court; first woman on the high court

Shaquille O’Neal (born 1972), 15-time All-Star center for the Boston Celtics

Steve Martin (born 1945), comedian, actor

T. Boone Pickens (born 1928), energy entrepreneur, philanthropist

Tommy Lee Jones (born 1946), actor

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009), CBS News anchor

Waylon Jennings (1937–2002), country singer

Willie Nelson (born 1933), country singer-songwriter

Willie Shoemaker (1931–2003), most successful jockey in history

Leave a comment and tell us who we missed or should’ve left out…

The Alamo – Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and 180+ Texians including battled for 3 days against 6000+ members of the Mexican army. Granted, they lost and all the Alamo defenders were killed but it inspired the rest of Texas to fight Mexico for independence. The phrase “Remember the Alamo” was the rallying cry that the Texians, led by Sam Houston, used to defeat General Santa Anna and the Mexicans.

BBQ – Texans love their BBQ. So much so that four styles of Texas BBQ have become popular around the different geographic region.
In East Texas, the beef is cooked slowly over hickory and marinated in a sweet, tomato-based sauce until the mean is basically falling off the bone. Central Texans prefer that the meat be rubbed with spices and cooked over indirect heat from pecan or oak wood. Out in West Texas the meat is cooked over direct heat from mesquite wood giving it a somewhat bitter taste. The South Texas style features thick, molasses-like sauces that keep the meat very moist.

Football – This quote from Legendary Cowboy’s Coach Tom Landry say is it all,  ”Football is to Texas what religion is to a priest.”  It isn’t uncommon in Texas to spend $20m on a high school football stadium and pack it with 40,000+ fans for a Texas high school playoff game.

Black Gold, Texas Tea - It all began on Jan. 10, 1901 when the Lucas No. 1 well blew at Spindletop near Beaumont spewing mud, gas and oil more than 100 feet into the air. With that dramatic fanfare, Texas’ economy was wrenched from its rural, agricultural roots and flung headlong into the petroleum and industrial age.  Oil profoundly changed the culture of the state, and it continues to affect most Texans’ lives in ways that may not be obvious to the casual observer.

Texas Longhorn –  Commonly seen while driving along Texas back country, the Texas Longhorn known for its characteristic horns, which can extend to 7 feet.  The Longhorn also serves as the official Texas State Large Mammal, official symbol for Fort Worth as well as the mascot for the University of Texas at Austin.

Size – As the 2nd, largest state in both size and population, the state of Texas encompasses 268,820 square miles.  The size of the state and the bigger-than-life attitude of some of its inhabitants has led to the saying that “Everything is bigger in Texas.”  Another common term, “Texas-Sized” is used to describe something that is large compared to other objects of its type.

JFK Assassination - On Friday, November 22, 1963 at 12:30 p.m CST,  John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.   Kennedy was fatally shot while traveling with his wife Jacqueline, Texas governor John Connally, and the latter’s wife Nellie, in a Presidential motorcade.   For more information, visit the 6th floor museum in Dallas.

Chili – Texans love their chili almost as much as BBQ.  Some people believe that it all started back the 1840′s as Texas cowboys pounded beef fat and dried beef with chili peppers and salt to make trail food then later boil it to make a dish they called chili.  Some say cowboys planted oregano, chiles, and onions along their well travelled trails then harvest the spices, onions, and chiles on their way back and combine them with beef to create a chili recipe called “Trail Drive Chili”.

Don’t Mess with Texas – The slogan began as a statewide advertising campaign in 1986 to reduce littering on Texas roadways and quickly became a Texas cultural phenomenon. While officially a trademark of the Texas Department of Transportation, “Don’t Mess with Texas” is frequently cited example of pride in Texas culture.

The Heat – Texas actually has a very diverse climate but generally the eastern half of Texas is humid subtropical and the western half is semi-arid. However it is all hot and humid with average temps in the high 90′s for June, July and August.