Submitted by: MEH
The Quest: Attend a house of culture and delve into a bat swarm
The Challenge: Take a selfie at Miller Theater and a video of the bats at Waugh Bridge
If you manage to take your camper through Houston central, two of my favorite free attractions while living there were the Waugh bridge bat colony (a huge colony of bats flies out every night at dusk from their living quarters under the bridge, to feed on the insects in the bayou) and free shows at Miller outdoor theater which range from Opera to musical sing-alongs. I challenge you to attend one or both of these places. As proof, you must take a video of the bats flying out from the bridge, and report as to whether the colony is slowly recovering from Harvey, and/or post a selfie of yourselves at Miller Theater. Houston has a lot to offer if you're willing to park the camper somewhere and explore for the day!
Wombat's Ruling: This sounds too pleasant to be a quest! Let's call it 200 experience for each quest with 2 hours of charity for each quest.
Update 5/28/18
We turned up in Houston with just enough time to get to the bridge, find a place to park the rig, take a little stroll and set up to watch the bats emerge. We were there so late (because they were so cool!) that we has to turn our attention to where we were going to sleep that night (Walmart in the suburbs, ugh) and didn't have time to make it out to the Theater.
The Waugh Bridge bats had a colony of 300,000+ but unfortunately Hurricane Harvey caused the river under their bridge to flood. It came up so high that it trapped the bats in the crevices they live in, and even though some local residents braved the flood water (and bat bites!) to scoop out and rescue some of the bats, unfortunately a lot of them didn't make it (there are still bat bones in the bridge, grim!). So between drowning and probably some of the colony deciding that the bridge was cursed, the colony is thought to be about half of what it once was. It was still amazing and huge to us. I think they're starting the recovery process. Plus that hunting hawk doesn't seem to be too good at his job, so hunting pressure isn't as high as it could be...
Wombat's Ruling: Very cool! I was hoping for something a bit different (see below), but full points for the bat quest nonetheless (200 exp, 2 hours charity).
