Be sure to bring your kids in to our Mother’s Day Event this Saturday May 1 and Sunday May 2 to have your kids make a handprint keepsake just in time for Mother’s Day! The handprint will be made in a beautiful tin for FREE with your purchase of $100. Without purchase, it’s just $15. Help your kid make a lasting impression by coming to your local Peek store this weekend. Psst…Dads, this makes a PERFECT Mother’s Day gift!

Image courtesy of Big Bend National Park

There’s no better argument for conservation and preservation of national parks than Big Bend National Park in Texas. You think Europe’s old? Big Bend laughs at Roman ruins. It’s actually kind of a phlegmy cackle, because this place is oooold: People have lived there since caveman days. Specifically, the Paleo-Indian era, starting in 8000 B.C. It’s so old, there are petroglyphs of Larry King’s kindergarten class. Zing!

Okay, seriously: A visit to this national park is going to have something for everyone. In a one-hour drive, you can see mountains, deserts, and the Rio Grande river. There are hot springs to soak in, and once in a while, there’s even snow. There’s the caveman stuff. There are the Chisos Indians and Spanish explorers, both of whom inhabited the area from about 1535 to the mid 1800s. “Presidios,” or forts, still stand along the Rio Grande dating from the 1700s. Ranchers roamed from the mid 1800s until the early 1900s, when miners began settling the area in earnest.

There are literally thousands of archeological sites on its 118 miles, including dinosaur fossils. The biggest flying dinosaur of all time — the pterosaur, with its 36-foot wingspan — was found here, along with the skull of a chasmosaurus, the biggest known skull of any land animal. Big. Big and old. Exploring this beautiful, moon-like vista, you really can’t believe how many generations of people made life work in this beautiful, but harsh, environment.

Image of Everett Townsend courtesy of Big Bend National Park

This panorama has been home to loads of interesting characters, and mysteries and ghosts seem to walk the barren landscape. But the explorer and conservationist who brought this park to national-park status was Everett Townsend. As a young man, in 1894, while he was tracking some stolen mules, he came though a pass and lo and behold, he caught his first glimpse of the Chisos Mountains, the centerpiece of the park. Awe-struck for life, he vowed then and there to do whatever he could to preserve the area.

Years passed; he became a sheriff, then a state representative. Here was his chance: he co-authored a bill in 1933, outlining and establishing a plan for the park. It worked. His first act was to create a local wing of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was a civilian “army” of working men created by Franklin Roosevelt to get people back to work during the Great Depression. The Great Bend corps was 200 men who lived in tents, then barracks, being paid $30 a month to build roads, culverts, and trails still in use today. Over the next ten years Townsend  worked tirelessly to get the park national and international status; he finally got his wish in 1944, just three years before he died.

Of course, no visit to Texas would be complete without a trip to the Dallas Peek store, where you can pick up the Take a Hike tee just in time to put t-shirt slogans into action.

The Take a Hike tee. Do what it says.

There’s No Crying In Baseball!

Spring training is here, and opening day of the official season was April 4. Are you ready? By “ready,” of course, we mean – do you have the right outfits? (We at Peek were mostly gym-class flameouts, but we love to watch — and we do appreciate any excuse for a fashion upgrade.)

We’ve prepared ourselves for the onslaught of the national pastime with some tributes to classic players. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that there are lots of different ways to appreciate baseball. Dad might be sitting there quietly assessing stats, while Mom becomes emotionally attached to the Giants because that Tim Lincecum is so gosh-darn cute.

For kids, sometimes it’s stories about great players of the past that can draw them into the games of the present. The players we picked are exceptional for a number of reasons, and even if the kids aren’t inspired right away, when they see how Grandma and Grandpa go nuts over their Mickey Mantle jersey, they’ll begin to understand the way baseball is more than a sport to so many people.

Jackie Robinson is best-known as the first black player in the Major Leagues. (For those of you who remember the Trivial Pursuit question naming Moses Fleetwood Walker, fine – the first black player after the Major Leagues excluded, then re-included, black players.) But Robinson’s Brooklyn Dodgers career was only a fraction of the story. He was a Michael Jordan-level athlete who excelled at every sport he played, earning varsity letters in football, basketball, and track in addition to baseball at UCLA. He was good. Really good. Good enough to guarantee he’d become a hero despite people’s reservations about allowing a black guy to play. He also pulled a Rosa Parks when he was in the military in 1944, refusing to go to the back of an Army bus; the resulting court martial kept him from being deployed overseas. There’s lots more to say about Robinson, of course. Just don’t forget he was also arguably the greatest second baseman who ever played.

Babe Ruth played for the Yankees starting in 1919, and proceeded to change how baseball was played. Before his tenure as a prodigious home-run hitter, low scoring games were the norm. Ruth’s big swing got fans excited about every game he played, and he kept raising the bar. 1920: 54 home runs. 1921: 59 home runs. 1927: a whopping 60 home runs, a record that stood till fellow Yankee Roger Maris broke it in 1961. Plus, he was an incredibly colorful character, known as much for his off-field antics as for his on-field achievements. But the Babe Ruth stat people most like to cite to kids is his other record – for strikeouts. Because while he led the league with 714 home runs, he also struck out 1330 times – the message being, keep trying. Because even if you fail a lot, you could succeed even more, and end up becoming a home-run king.

Mickey Mantle was another Yankee, and a real fan fave. He hit the Major Leagues when he was just 19, winning 7 World Series and 12 pennant races during the Yankees’ golden era. He’s a mythical figure to New Yorkers of that era, like Billy Crystal and Bob Costas; imagine all four Beatles rolled into one and swinging a bat, and you’ll begin to understand his popularity, charisma and humor. He was a switch hitter with amazing power and speed who battled thorugh horrible injuries to keep playing. Most affecting, toward the end, he warned anyone who saw him as a role model to avoid the alcoholism that he finally saw had overshadowed his glory. This only made his fans love him more.

Sandy Koufax played for the Dodgers in New York and LA, and was such an amazing pitcher they had to change the rules of the game to slow him down. He pitched four no-hitters, including one perfect game (no men on base even because of an error or a walk – he was only the sixth guy to do that, ever), so they lowered the pitching mound. He won the Cy Young award three times, all unanimously. The guy was just an outstanding pitcher. He’s also known for being a great Jewish athlete who refused to play on Yom Kippur during the 1965 World Series.

Did we miss your favorite player? Let us know for our next round of baseball tees! Now, batter up!