DALLAS: FEELS LIKE HOME AGAIN

After a busy week bouncing around Utah, we started the long trek to Texas. It was a 16 hour drive, so we planned to split it over 3 days. (A normal drive day for us is 5-6 hours because towing a giant RV is much more tiring.) However, Eric was feeling very motivated to keep going, so we ended up doing 10 hours in one day! It was a long, tiring day but it got us to Dallas a day earlier which gave us time for some fun - starting with the rodeo on Saturday night. I always love rodeos!

The next day, we went to Dinosaur Valley State Park. I found this place a couple of years ago when planning a trip to Texas that fell through. Now that we were only an hour away, we had to take Reed because he LOVES dinosaurs. This park has dozens of real dinosaur tracks in a dry riverbed. While most places would rope them off to keep people away, this park leaves them fully accessible so you can walk right up to them and put your own hand or foot in them. As you can see, Reed loved it!

For the next few days we stayed busy with work and school, but one afternoon we went to the George W. Bush presidential library. Eric and I had visited Lyndon B. Johnson’s library a few years ago and enjoyed the history of it, but we had no personal memories of his presidency. This was much more meaningful because we vividly remember the Bush years. Needless to say, the 9/11 exhibit stirred a lot of emotions. There were some twisted steel scraps from the World Trade Center, along with the bullhorn that President Bush used to speak to the rescue workers at Ground Zero. While it was hard explaining everything to the boys, this brought history to life for them in a new and tangible way.

After we left the heaviness of the 9/11 exhibit, we moved on to the Oval Office replica and other artifacts from the White House.

The last exhibit area was devoted to presidential policy and decision-making. There was a mock situation room with an interactive simulation of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. There were video messages from representatives of local and federal entities, each presenting conflicting advice. It showed how difficult and stressful a president’s job is, when decisions are rarely clear-cut and obvious but the consequences are far-reaching.

I enjoyed this week in Dallas. It felt good to be out of the desert and back in the land of sweet tea and southern drawls!