Amorphophallus Titanum

We heard about this on the news, and thought wouldn't this be a great trip, run down to Houston to see and smell this awesome flower! Well, it just so happened to be blooming while we had nothing on our calendar, which in itself is rare these days, so I called my cousin to see if they wanted to see it too, and after a few hundred phone calls, we got it settled, packed our bags and hit the road! Nothing like spontaneity!

We got in Friday and let the kids stay up playing most of the night, and left first thing Saturday morning for the museum. We've been there before, it's one of our favorite places to go in Houston, but it's been a while. On the way there, a car nearly hit me, but wrecked into the guard rail, so Benny and David pulled over to help and wait for the police, so Tina and I went ahead and picked up our tickets.

Then I was surprised because we had no line really to get in. The news showed people waiting in line for hours and we pretty much walked right up. When we left though, there was a HUGE line, with the next available time to see Lois the next morning! So we must have just gotten there at a rare, slow time.

And she was magnificent! She wasn't as smelly as I expected, but when you got close, you could certainly get a whiff, and when you stood on the opposite side of here, the air flow would just blow the stench to you. It was bad. The kids hated it and left pretty quick. Benny said it just smelled like the Houston morgue, but to me it smelled like hamburger meat that had been left out too long. Either way, not a smell you expect from such a big and beautiful flower!

Then we spent some time in the butterfly area, watching all the beautiful butterflies and the kids tried to get them to land on them, but they couldn't stay still long enough for that to happen. Then we went to a cute little diner for lunch that had some really incredible food and milkshakes, and then hit the road for home. It was a quick, whirlwind trip, but it was a lot of fun, and something I'm glad we got to experience.