(This is part one of the two part story of my trip to Dallas)

Some of you may know that I went to a guinea pig hoedown in Grapevine, Texas on Sunday. A hoedown is a kind-of western party. I hear there is usually a lot of dancing and not many guinea pigs. This hoedown was the opposite, no dancing and lots of piglins. I am pretty sure I like that better. Anyway, Grapevine is north of Dallas and we live south of Austin so it was a long drive up there, too long to make in one day, especially since my owner always takes the scenic route. A two day adventure deserves to be covered in two blog posts and that is what I am going to do. This post will cover the parts of the trip outside of the hoedown itself. In a couple of days, I’ll write another post about what happened at the hoedown.

I am calling this post “Flower ‘Bara” because of the ridiculous number of photographs my owner took of me in the wildflowers on the way up to Dallas and back. You’ll recall that she has forced me to participate in several sessions of bluebonnet/capybara photography. Turns out, she’s got a thing for all flowers, not just bluebonnets. We had to keep stopping. She said it was for me to get out and stretch my legs but I think we could all see her real motive.

Not that I’m complaining, the stops were a lot of fun. I’d never even dreamed of so many flowers. If I had dreamed of flowers like that, I think I would have dreamed they were edible. It looks like I am wandering through a veritable smörgåsbord but in fact there wasn’t even any tasty grass mixed in.

One of the things that was mixed in was my owner’s daughter, Coral. Coral and her husband, Carl, have been staying with us…again. I am afraid I do not like people invading my space and Coral, especially, gets on my nerves. I am somewhat ashamed to say that last time Coral stayed with here, I did get in one really good bite. I know I shouldn’t have bitten her but she really drives me crazy. Anyway, she and Carl were in their own car so mostly it didn’t bother me that they were coming along with us. But then when we stopped, my owner decided to get a photo of the two of us together. At first I was good, but then, as you can see in the photo above, Coral got all weird and I lost control of myself.

I gave Coral a good scare, let me tell you! But I am actually glad Sheldon didn’t let me bite her. I know that would have been a mistake in the long run.

After the attack incident, Coral didn’t taunt me so much for the rest of the trip. In fact, I didn’t even mind having her at the GP Hoedown itself. Maybe she learned something…but I doubt it. I know I didn’t.

Moving right along, we made a couple more stops on the drive up.

I was surprised how different the flowers were when we got farther north and closer to Dallas. We don’t have any of those pinkish-white ones near our house. Or the bright pink ones in the photo below.

See how sweet I can be when people treat me right? I’m really not the monster that Coral brings out in me.

That night we stayed in a motel in Irving, TX. That is the first time I have been away from home overnight since I was a baby capybara.

We stayed at a Studio 6 Motel, which is pet-friendly chain. No one even noticed I wasn’t a dog. But the first couple of hours I couldn’t stop shaking I was so scared. My owner got in bed with me and we watched a movie on TV. After a while I calmed down enough to sleep. The next morning I was pretty happy to leave that place, I still think it was scary and a capybara might get lost there forever!

We went for a long walk in a field next to the motel first thing in the morning.

After our walk, it was time for the guinea pig hoedown (remember the hoedown will be its own post). After that we headed home.

The drive home was faster than the drive up. I guess my owner and Sheldon were tired. Or maybe it’s because we set out late in the day and so part of the drive was after dark.

We did have one exciting stop when my owner spotted a little western box turtle trying to cross the road!

My owner said that even if the turtle, who was (naturally) named Sheldon, made it across the road this time, it was not a good place for it to live so close to the freeway. I felt sorry for Sheldon because people had ruined a place where he might have lived for 50 years, but I was glad my owner said we would find him a better home.

Down the road we found a nice park on a river and everything. We took Sheldon as far away from the people part of the park as we could and let him go in a meadow surrounded by trees. I think he will be happy there and I hope he finds other box turtles to cavort with.

We were still a long way from home but my owner had to get in one more stop for some wild flower photos.

We were just at the side of the road and while we were taking the photos, some local people stopped and wanted to get their photo with me too. So my owner took a photo of them taking a photo of me. We should have had Sheldon take a photo of my owner taking a photo of the local people taking a photo of me. That would have been funny.

Well, that’s pretty much the whole weekend, minus the GP Hoedown. Fun was had by all! And I really do like the flowers even if I can’t eat them.