The Texas Stars are the 2014 Calder Cup Champions for the American Hockey League (AHL), where they play at the Cedar Park Center just west of Austin, Texas. They are the primary development affiliate of the NHL Dallas Stars.
Dallas Stars
We are starting our 6th year as season ticket holders, and share the tickets with my son and daughter-in-law. Our seats are in the 2nd row right behind the glass just to the side of our goal. There are about 40 games every year, and we go to half while babysitting our grandkids for the rest when they go. We really enjoy it a lot.
In their first year, they went through all rounds of the playoffs to lose in game 7 of the Calder Cup Final series. However, last year we went all the way and won the Calder Cup (similar to the NHL Stanley Cup). After winning their division and the AHL season points leader, during the early rounds of the conference playoffs, first they had to defeat the following teams:
Oklahoma City Barons (Edmonton Oilers affiliate)
Grand Rapids Griffins (Detroit Red Wings affiliate)
Toronto Marlies (Toronto Maple Leafs affiliate)
Game 5 Highlights (Jun 17)
Finally, in the AHL Calder Cup Finals between the Western and Eastern Conference Champions, they won 3 games in a row in overtime on the road in the fifth game of the best-of-7 series against the St. Johns IceCaps (Winnipeg Jets affiliate) at St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Here are the highlights of that game:
Winning Goal, Award Summary & Handshakes
This picks up with the winning goal from the previous video (with a little overlap at the beginning), reviews the team and individual awards for the season, and shows the traditional team handshakes.
Game 5 Watch Party, Hockey Music & Post-Game Celebrations
Since it was away, we had to attend a watch party at the arena, and I have included this video which shows that watch party, which includes a slideshow of the post-game celebrations. It also includes some hockey music:
“We are the Champions” by Queen
“We Own the Night” by The Wanted
“Timber” by Pitbull feat. Kei$ha
Opener Highlights & Banner Raising (Oct 11)
Now the new season has started with the opening game on October 11th again the Iowa Wild, which had a sellout attendance (6,863). During the pre-game ceremony at last Saturday’s game (Oct 11), they introduced each player individually and they skated out to form a line across the ice. First, they lowered smaller banners from the ceiling as West Division Champions, AHL Season Points Leader, and Western Conference Champions. Then they unveiled a gigantic Calder Cup banner from a table at center ice near the team benches and raised it directly overhead to the rafters where it hangs.
Photos
I’ve also included some of my photos taken during these games. The first few photos were taken from our jumbotron at the arena during the watch party showing the post-game celebration raising the cup and handshakes between the teams. When the team returned home, there was a celebration at the arena for the team, management, and fans (some of whom are shown below). Finally the opening game started and I included a face-off photo as well as the jumbotron display after they won this first game.
After in returning from St. Louis, we decided to stop over at Branson, Missouri. It’s a nice, clean, family-oriented entertainment destination with over 100 shows and plenty of things to do and pretty scenery in the surrounding area of the Ozark Mountains. We enjoyed a water show, raced go-karts, viewed wax actors, and watched the SIX show. It was fun time and we would like to return another time.
Water
Also, we ate at the Mexican restaurant Cantina Laredo, which was very good. We were familiar with it when we lived near Dallas. It had a great location overlooking the $7.5 million water fountains attraction in the town square at Branson Landing, which is a nice outdoor shopping area with over 100 specialty shops and 16 restaurants along a 1.5-mile scenic boardwalk adjacent to Lake Taneycomo.
Every hour in the evening, they have a musical fountain show with fire bursts that’s amazing to watch, which features the first-ever merging of water, fire, light and music that offers a dazzling interplay of water Fountains shooting 120-foot geysers and fire cannons blasting, all choreographed to light and music.
I took some photos of the fountains, but it’s hard to get the overall effect with just the single images. These are presented as a slideshow, which automatically advances through all 18 photos. Also, I included a photo of Table Rock Lake from an observation tower just west of Branson, and then the slideshow repeats. When you move the cursor over the slideshow, a pause button with left and right arrows appear, so you can stop it at any time and/or skip backward or forward; that might be useful if you want to zip though it more quickly than waiting for the
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Racing
We played miniature golf and my son raced GT-5 and RT-8 go-karts in timed heats up to 40 mph on the Xtreme Racing Center course.
Wax
We visited the Hollywood Wax Museum. I’ve included photos of many of the famous actors there, and most of them looked pretty good. My son kept wanting to get his picture taken with the figures, so the ones I cropped appear narrower than the others. You can click any photo in this gallery to view a larger image with the ability to go forward or backward to view the others, if you prefer that option to scanning over them all.
Hollywood Wax Museum
King Kong
Robert Downey, Jr.
Harold Lloyd
Samuel L. Jackson
Tom Cruise
Lucille Ball
George Clooney
Jack Black
Leonard DiCaprio
Orlando Bloom & Johnny Depp
Bradley Cooper
Clint Eastwood
Haley Barry
Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie
Keanu Reeves
Tommy Lee Jones & Will Smith
Will Farrell
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Jeff Gordon
Sean Connery
Sylvester Stallone
Elvira
Boris Karloff
Frankenstein
Elsa Manchester
Phantom of the Opera
Michael Jackson
Monroe, Bogart, Dean
Marilyn Monroe
Humphrey Bogart
James Dean
Daniel Craig
John Wayne
Harrison Ford
Anthony Banderas
Viggo Mortensen
Willie Nelson
Jamie Foxx
Owen Wilson & Jackie Chan
Michael Cain
Donald Trump
Pierce Brosnan
Ben Stiller
Hugh Hefner
Drew Barrymore
Jim Carey
Vin Diesel
Bob Hope
Red Skelton
W. C. Fields
Judy Garland
The Marx Brothers
Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy
Marlon Brando
Colin Farrell
Eddie Murphy
Nicholas Cage
George Burns
Woody Allen
SIX
We saw the SIX musical show, which is an a cappella singing group of 6 Knudsen brothers. They perform for two hours and there are no instruments, but everything you hear is just their voices. They even performed the sound tracks that accompanied several movie clips with lots of action, car chases, crashes, and other sound effects and you wouldn’t believe it’s just their voices making all the sounds.
Recently, we visited St. Louis for my nephew’s wedding, and we visited the Gateway Arch on the west bank of the Mississippi River where St. Louis was founded. It is a magnificent 630-foot high stainless steel monument to the westward expansion of the United States built in 1965 for $13 million. It’s the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere, Missouri’s tallest accessible building, and the world’s tallest arch. You can ride all the way to the top in a series of 5-person mini-pods, and then you can get out and look through the narrow windows at the city and river in the surrounding area.
You can see St. Louis landmarks such as the Old St. Louis County Courthouse and Busch Stadium (where the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team plays). I also tried taking some photos of the river from the top of the arch, but those didn’t really turn out so well. We ate dinner at the Broadway Oyster Bar, which is a famous Cajun/Creole seafood restaurant that has live St. Louis blues/R&B music nightly right near Busch Stadium.
My Photos
Here are the photos that I took during our visit to the Gateway Arch.
Recently, we stayed in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where there are many historic early 20th-century bathhouses. We soaked in the natural mineral spring baths for a while at the Quapaw Baths and Spa. These thermal waters have been used by Native Americans, gamblers, and gangsters.
Last week, we visited the Hangar Hotel & Airport Diner in Fredericksburg, Texas. I wanted to share some photos and related music, videos, and movies that you might find interesting. It’s a World-War II themed 50-room hotel built in 1995 that looks like a Quonset hut used by the US Army Air Force in the South Pacific during the 1940’s.
We read an article “Hit the Road” by Eileen Matei in the Texas Coop Power magazine published in June 2014, which we receive as members of the Pedernales Electric Cooperative. The weather was great and Becker Vineyards was having our quarterly wine club pickup party that Sunday, so this sounded like a nice day trip. If you want to read the magazine article too, just click on the image; there is also a slideshow of 5 photos just below it in the article.
My Photos
Here are some photos that I took during our visit to the Hangar Hotel.
Rocking chairs on porches
Officer’s Club
Brewery wagon
Pinup billboard, searchlight, palm
The Ruptured Duck
Lobby Front Desk
Diner runway view
Hotel side door
Back of hotel
Side with water tower
Side with palm tree
Cotton Gin Village
Butterflies
Rio Grande room
Texas cuisine & wine
Lavender Haus
Becker Vineyards
Wine Club – Sep 2014
When you first arrive from the parking lot, you see the back of the Hangar Hotel after you walk past an old aircraft sitting out on the lawn, which was being washed down and cleaned that day. There is a tall water tower right next to the hotel.
You can see the two levels of rooms as we walked around the left side of the hotel toward the Airport Diner that was located opposite the hotel right next to the runway, where we planned to have lunch. There is a photo with another view looking back from the runway showing the palm trees and water tower a little better.
The front of the hotel faces the runway of the Gillespie County Airport. There are rocking chairs on the upper and lower porches where guests can watch the sunsets and planes.
The Officer’s Club is the hotel bar and lounge with red leather chairs and fireplace. Just outside the entrance, there is a billboard with a Nose-art pinup girl that reads “I Sleep Like a Baby”. Also there is a searchlight and palm tree reminiscent of the South Pacific during World War II. Outside the Officer’s Club, there is an old wagon for the Fredericksburg Brewing Company, which adds some character to that entrance.
After entering through the Officer’s Club, you come into the hotel lobby, which had old World War II memorabilia everywhere and 1940’s music playing in the background to get you into the mood of that period. There’s an old wooden front desk with mail slots, and there is a row of clocks overhead for major time zones (but I missed that in my photo).
This video from Fun Places to Fly provides a great tour of the Hangar Hotel and Airport Diner.
Netflix DVD
On one wall in the lobby is an airplane panel with the “The Ruptured Duck” painting from the B25-B medium bomber flown by Ted W. Lawson in the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1942. He piloted the 7th plane in the squadron and after the mission was completed he crashed in the China coast where he was critically injured and had his leg amputated to save his life. When he returned, he wrote the book “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo”, which became a movie in 1944 starring Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson, and Robert Mitchum based on his crew’s experiences (available on DVD from Netflix).
Private planes can fly into Gillespie County Airport and eat at the Airport Diner. It offers a 1940’s theme with Bomber Burgers on the menu and little planes on the counter with mints and hanging as mobiles from the lights. I included a view of the planes on the tarmac from our window booth seat during lunch.
The article also contained this video about fly-in lunching at the Airport Diner next to the Hanger Hotel.
There are plenty of things to do and see in the area. If you have an RV instead of a private plane, there is the Lady Bird Johnson RV Park. If you are driving by car, bring your golf clubs since there is an 18-hole Lady Bird Golf Course, which is a nice place to play during your visit. The Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park has additional amenities including picnic areas, tennis, and swimming pool. About 30 minutes east is the LBJ National Historical Park which features the former president’s home and ranch.
Across the highway is the old Cotton Gin Village, which is a quaint bed-and-breakfast with cabins of various sizes such as the Rio Grande room shown above, which is fairly close to the entrance near the waterfall and fish pond. You can eat dinner at the Cabernet Grill which features Texas cuisine and Texas wine.
National Geographic magazine included the Texas Hill Country as one of the world’s most spectacular car trips in their book on the 500 “Drives of a Lifetime”.
Here’s some background music for this story. Of course, there’s Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller, which was so popular during the war. Also, I have included three different versions of the hit song “Bali Ha’i” from “South Pacific” Broadway musical from 1967, the film in 1995, and a new Broadway show in 2008.
“Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Miller on “Pure Gold” (1980)
Bali Ha’i by Florence Henderson, Giorgio Tozzi, Irene Byatt, Dana Shimizu, Kennan Shimizu from Original Cast Recording of “South Pacific” (1967)
Bali Ha’i (Reprise) by Florence Henderson, Giorgio Tozzi, Irene Byatt, Dana Shimizu, Kennan Shimizu… on Original Cast Recording of “South Pacific” (1967)
Bali Ha’i (from the 20th Century-Fox film “South Pacific”) by Bloody Mary, The Ken Darby Singers on Original Soundtrack of “South Pacific” (1995)
Bali Hai’i by Loretta Ables Sayre on South Pacific (The New Broadway Cast Recording) (2008)
Reprise: Bali Hai’i by Chorus (Island Women) on South Pacific (The New Broadway Cast Recording) (2008)
Links
For additional information, see the following web sites that were mentioned in this article: Fredericksburg, Hanger Hotel, Airport Diner, Cotton Gin Village, Cabernet Grill, and National Museum of the Pacific War.
