Ellie Opens the Adventure Book

It has been awhile since Ellie has opened the adventure book, so we have been overdue for a little excursion.  Anyone who knows her is aware of the fact that Ellie likes to stretch her birthday celebration out over a month or so.  She does that with holidays too.  So, since Mother's Day is this month, Ellie decided to start celebrating at the first of May and I'm pretty sure the celebration is going to go all month long.

This past week we took a trip to the area around Canton, Texas.  Canton is known throughout the state for First Monday Trade Days.  This is sort of a big flea market that is held once a month.  OK, it's not really on the first Monday of the month.  It's held on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday before the first Monday.  And it is really big.  The grounds cover about 100 acres.  Some of it is under roof inside pole buildings and such.  A lot of it (the more flea markety stuff) is outdoors.  More on the Trade Days later.

We headed up on the Wednesday before the Trade Days because we wanted to be able to get to the Trade Days as soon as it opened on Thursday.  We first went to Athens, which is a quaint little town about 25 miles from Canton.  It was about lunch time when we got there so we stopped at the Sweet Pea Bistro and Espresso Bar on the square for a light lunch before starting our rambles.  We had mainly come to Athens to see the  East Texas Arboretum and Botanical Garden.

This place covers 100 acres just outside of Athens.  It was a hot, muggy day so we decided not to trek through the woods to see the arboretum proper.  We just spent an hour or so walking through the grounds of the botanical garden and checking out an old homestead that is on the property.  I was interested to see that the Henderson County Master Gardeners Association has a demonstration garden in the botanical garden area.

After we saw everything that we wanted to see in Athens, we checked into our motel.  We had decided not to stay in Canton because we thought that the rates for motels close to the Trade Days grounds would probably be pretty high.  So we stayed in a little town called Mabank, which is about twenty miles from Canton. 

The motel was comfortable although we almost didn't stay there because when we pulled into the parking lot we saw that the whole front was covered by chimney swift nests and there must have been a couple of hundred of them swirling about overhead catching mosquitoes and letting fly with their digested remains on every car in the lot.  The desk clerk told us that the motel is only a couple of years old and when it was built the birds moved from the nearby freeway underpass to the front of the hotel.  They must have liked it because they're still there.

Mabank is close to Cedar Creek Lake, a large reservoir that supplies water to Fort Worth and surrounding areas.  When the lake was built, about fifty years ago, a number of towns sprang up around  it.  One of them is Gun Barrel City, which is just south of Mabank.  Gun Barrel City is a bit larger than Mabank and the strip of highway that runs from Gun Barrel City to Seven Points (which used to be called Gun Barrel Road, hence the name of the town) is the location of most of the restaurants in the area.  A large part of the road is really a causeway that runs across several very small islands in the lake.

At suppertime we cruised the road and settled on a place called the Cedar Isle Restaurant and Club for dinner.  The Cedar Isle that the restaurant sits on looks to be about the size of the place we used to have in the country.  So the restaurant is pretty much entirely surrounded by the lake.  There is a large outside eating area with a great view of the lake and several islands that the state has reserved as wild bird sanctuaries.  It was pretty cool to sit out there and watch pelicans, cormorants and other water birds while we ate dinner.  Lou Somethingorother, the restaurant owner, stopped by our table to ask how we liked our food so we had the chance to hear some of the history of the lake and the area from him.  The beer was cold, the food wasn't bad and the ambiance was great, so we enjoyed our dinner in Gun Barrel City.

Early the next morning we headed up to Canton to check out the Trade Days.  We've been to a lot these sort of things over the years but this one is the biggest flea market we have ever experienced.  There are a lot of buildings which mostly seem to have craft and gift shop stuff in them although some have antiques as well.  There are also food vendors in the buildings.  We had lunch at a great crepe place in the food court area.  The only problem with it was that there weren't enough tables.  So we had to sit on chairs and try to eat our meal on our laps, which was pretty difficult.  I was surprised at the number of people there, given the fact that it was Thursday and the word is that only 70% of the vendors are there on that day. 

The outside area at the Trade Days grounds is the home of about a bajillion flea market vendors selling mostly “American Pickers” type stuff as well as new gloves and things like that.  The place is so big that you can rent grocery carts, scooters and such to hold your purchases and help you get around.  We spent the morning there shopping and having lunch.  Ellie bought a few things but after about four hours she said that everything was starting to look the same to her.  So we packed up her purchases and went back to Mabank.

There isn't a  lot in Mabank but one of the things that is there is Shorty's Soda Shop.  It's a cool little place that is fixed up like a 1940's soda fountain.  Ellie liked it as soon as we walked in because she has our kitchen decorated like an old-fashioned diner and Shorty's is decorated the same way.  I had a sundae and Ellie had a soda while she schmoozed with the owner and told her about our kitchen decorations.  When the woman at Shorty's found out that we often visited in Amish country, she told us about a Mennonite store in Kemp, a small town a few miles from Mabank.  So after we finished our ice cream we headed to Kemp to check out the Heritage Market and Bakery. 

I have to admit that shopping there was a lot like shopping in Amish country.  In fact, many of the brands of pickles, jellies and the like were the very same that we have bought in Amish stores in Ohio.  Since I am the king of condiments I bought a couple of different kinds of relish.  Ellie stocked up on some cooking supplies and lotion.  Then we headed south to another little town called Malakoff where we did some antique shopping before heading back up to Gun Barrel City for dinner.

When we got to Gun Barrel City we decided that it was time to hit a chain restaurant instead of one of our usual one off choices.  So we stoked up on a hearty dinner at Chili's and called it a day.

We decided to skip the free breakfast at the hotel the next morning because it had filled up overnight with lots of noisy First Monday shoppers.  So we headed out early and stopped at the Denny's in Gun Barrel City for breakfast.  Then we headed home.

I guess Ellie couldn't quite back off the extended Mother's Day celebration, though, because the next morning we got out and about early and went to the local farmer's market where we bought a few veggies, sipped hand-squeezed juice drinks and listened to some free live music.  Then, since it was Cinco de Mayo, we stopped by our favorite neighborhood Tex-Mex place for some mole enchiladas and chalupa compuestos.  All in all it was a good start to Ellie's marathon Mother's Day celebration.