We packed up and headed to the big city for our missions from Lindsay Capobianco. We followed the interstate through Fort Worth, Arlington, and Dallas and arrived at the Park and Ride in Plano so we would be strategically located to catch a bus to our evening activity. We purchased our $4 day passes for the DART and hit the city of Dallas. (Have I told y'all how much I LOVE public transportation?!)
Our first assignment was lunch in Uptown Dallas. We hopped off the rail and onto the M-Line Trolley to get a look at Uptown. Lindsay's bud, aka The Texan, said the area has a great vibe and I needed to see how that compared to a Missouri vibe. He was dead-on. He also recommended Jake's Burgers for the best burger in Texas. He may have undersold it; it was possibly the best burger we've ever had! Top that with an excellent patio and you have a great lunch.
From there we were ready for our daily hike, city style, checking out the multiple suggested sites from Lindsay. We walked a few miles from Uptown to Downtown through the Dallas Arts district, past Dealy Plaza, the Grassy Knoll, and the Book Depository (we chose not to visit the 6th floor JFK museum - been there before and today was about being happy. That is still one of my earliest memories and such a sad one at that), and made our way past the Old Red Courthouse to Pioneer Cemetery. Low and behold I found another bronze settlers sculpture park. It is becoming my thing!
We caught the red line back to Plano and were set for our next assignment; the Plano BalloonFest! We haven't been to a balloon launch since the kids were young and I love the colors. I was so excited about the photo op, along with the skydivers, the balloon launch and glow, and the street dance. I was plumb parched so grabbed a nice strawberry lemonade, spread the blanket on the hill ready for the events to start and watched all the families around us including grandparents with their grandkids and couldn't help thinking about our future retirement adventures with AJ. The sky turned dark but not because of sunset. A storm brewed quickly and all events were cancelled. We caught a shuttle bus back to our truck just as the rain came. I hated not seeing the balloons but we had an excellent day in our Texas destination and appreciated all the suggestions from Lindsay and The Texan!
We decided to just start driving north until we were out of the rain, got too tired to keep going, or hit Oklahoma City (our next destination), whichever came first. As we drove through the heavy rain and lightning, we were seeing football stadium lights in all directions. We finally got right next to one and it is exactly as we had heard; HUGE fields, bigger than the high school it sat next to! Looking forward to an MCHS football game next Friday night. It may not be as grand, but there is something about high school football all the same.
We ended our night across the Oklahoma border at Lake Murray State Park. No rain right now but their is a chance of something cropping up. We could end this journey like we started, crawling in the truck in the middle of the night :)
Stats:
315 Miles
Gas $54.80
DART passes $8
Lunch $20
Festival $15
Dinner $8
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment