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A patriotic canine.

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A sparkler.

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On the left more sparklers, and on the right several glowsticks.

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Kids playing with glowsticks in front of a long-exposure.

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More long-explosure glowsticks.

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That's not a glowstick - that's fireworks!

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Fireworks over Austin.

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It's now Monday, July 5th. We drove about 90 minutes north to Waco, Texas, to visit three very unique places. Our first stop is the Dr. Pepper Museum.

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The museum was once the bottling site of Dr. Pepper, from 1885 to 1906, before it moved to larger facilities.

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And here is "Old Doc" himself, Bill Pantel, the most famous person from the world of Dr. Pepper. He owned the bottling plant in Dublin, TX, where they still make the good stuff with real cane sugar instead of corn syrup. He's behind the ticket counter.

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The line to the ticket counter. I suspect this is the hottest ticket in all of Waco...

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A very nice clock. It wasn't 4:00, but it's showing off the early Dr. Pepper ad slogan/logo. The story goes that if you drink Dr. Pepper at 10:00am, 2:00pm, and 4:00pm you'll have plenty of energy all day. So why have any other numbers on the clock? The Dr. Pepper fan club is the "10-2-4" club for that reason.

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A display of Dr. Pepper's inventor behind the counter of his old pharmacy.

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The old bottling room, filled with vintage bottling equipment.

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"Where did the name Soda Pop come from? In the early days of the soft drink industry, the carbon dioxide gas used for making the 'fizz' in the water was produced by pouring acid over marble dust (SODA); the sound made when the excess gas escaped a newly opened bottle was a popping sound (POP) = SODA POP!"

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A variety of old soda bottles.

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This is a 1930's bottle washer.

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In the same room was once a well which provided the water for Dr. Pepper bottling. When renovating to make this a museum they uncovered the old well. Here the camera is in my hand, facing up at a curved mirror which then reflects down at us and into the well below.