[March 25] We are packing up for the next journey, a two-month visit to the Southwest, and I realized I never did the final postings for the end of our Texas trip. That whole trip was a bit of a disaster from the get-go, and never really got into the swing of things. Battling being run down, stomach viruses, colds, and then encountering snow and ice storms…we finally gave up and just drove home as quickly as we could. We were thankful that none of us had covid (we tested more times than I can count), but whatever we had, we just couldn’t quite bounce back. We were all disappointed that we ended things early, but also knew it was no big deal — Texas would still be there for us to visit another day. And thankfully, it’s now another day! We are leaving Sunday to go right back where we left off in Dallas-Fort Worth. Then, our nemesis was the icy, cold weather; now, it’s wildfires and tornados. Wish us luck!

I updated the dashboard on the home page with our new stats: 26 states and almost 13k miles so far. We’ve also visited over 200 sites and museums during 11 weeks of travel. The time has flown by so quickly. I can’t believe we are on our last big loop for the year already. We’ve been saving the best for last I hope!

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The last week has been slow – or no- going. Icy, feezing rain kept us stuck in a hotel outside of San Antonio for three days. That was good for me to catch up on sleep and to recover from the stomach virus and cold I have. Graham has had both as well. #GoodTimes

We are all low on energy, but we are trying to push through as best we can. I keep telling myself that we are still meeting the goals of the trip: we are meeting new people, seeing new ways of living, learning about American history and culture, and checking out how different states are doing these days. We just aren’t having a ton of fun as we have on previous trips. Part of it is the weather. So much of this trip has been through cold and rainy weather. It has been unusually cold for this far South. We had really expected to be enjoying warm, sunny days. In hindsight, I should have postponed this trip by a few weeks; I think that would have made a major difference for our enjoyment. Nonetheless, this isn’t a vacation, it’s about learning, and we are still able to do that even when things aren’t going well. I’m just keeping our fingers crossed that things are on the upswing for our return trip. We still have lots of fun things planned.

We ended our three-day hibernation by finally having a nice sunny day to go hiking and explore the Hill Country area on our way to Austin. The area is beautiful, and it warmed up enough to be perfect hiking weather. Given our energy levels, we just did a few short hikes, but it greatly improved our mood and we physically started feeling better. Hopefully, we will all start bouncing back soon.

Austin is exactly as I expected. What a cool city. They know how to do food trucks around here, and the nightlife looks amazing. Sadly, in another screwup by me, I discovered that the bats don’t winter in Texas — they summer here! Ooops. Seeing all the bats is a major bucket list item for me, but having to come to Texas in the summer is a serious drawback. I’m so sad that we won’t see them this time. I had really been looking forward to it. We drove around the city and visited the Bullock Texas State History Museum for a few hours. We also stopped by the Jourdan-Bachman Pioneer Farm and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame. Dinner was one of the best Mexican meals I’ve ever had. The food down here is amazing. I wish we had more time here. I had planned on staying in the area for at least three days, but between the weather and our energy levels, we really need to be headed home soon.

We started the next day early at the Waco Mammoth Dig on our way to Dallas. It was cold – there was still ice and snow on the ground – but it was well worth it to see this site. We all loved visiting here, and are so glad we stopped.

We were supposed to head next to Dallas, and I was looking forward to meeting up with one of my friends from college. Being out in the cold made us realize eventually though that it was time to cut our losses and just head home. None of us felt that great, and we were all exhausted. We plugged in the fastest route and took off. We did manage a very quick driveby at the Vicksburg Battlefield but will have to save a proper visit for another time. Instead, we hooked up Scribd and made it through several audiobooks on our mad dash back home. At least Graham finally got to test a DQ Bizzard and, yes, I am happy to report that it does stay in the cup when you turn it upside down.

We ended up finishing the 10th and final volume of our American History reading this year, A Story of US, on the drive home. This is a great series and we have all thoroughly enjoyed listening to it together. I would happily start over and listen to all 60+ hours of this again — it’s honestly that good. We are making it through many more books than I expected this year. I really had no way in advance of gauging how much audio we would squeeze in. Their ability to attend to the audiobooks has grown throughout our travels this year. I’m so glad we have been able to listen to these together. We’ve had such great conversations during our drives; this is what I will miss the most when this year is over. Just having this time with these two amazing kids has been the biggest blessing of my life.

Next up, we will be visiting the Southwest states, spending lots of time in Arizona and New Mexico, but also going through the larger cities and visiting the beaches in Southern California. LA is likely our turning-around point. We will also visit Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Oklahoma. I expect us to leave during the latter half of March, and to be on the road for about 7 weeks or so. Until next time!

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It looks like we will be having some bad weather for a while — rainy, overcast, then extremely cold and possibly even snowy. In San Antonio! I thought I left DC to get out of the snow. Yikes. We will just have to play this all day by day at this point. We’ve hit the primary hiking part of our trip and I’m dying to get outside and see some Texas trails, which won’t be so much fun in the rain or cold. We will just take it day by day and wait out any bad weather.

Today was rainy and overcast, so we decided to visit some indoor museums and save downtown for the next sunny day. We started at the Witte Musuem of Natural History to learn more about Texas wildlife and geology and, of couse,to see the paleontology exhibits. This was a great medium-sized musuem consisting of several different buildings, some focused on natural history and others on Texas history.

There was a special exhibition, The Unseen World, focused on the microbial universe inside and on the human body. This was both very cool and very gross at times. It is amazing to learn about the bacteria and viruses that cohabitate with us, and without which we couldn’t survive. It was great that they had microscopes with different slides the kids could look at. We will be doing lots of bio lab work while we are home during our next layover. I have so many discection specimins and anatomy lab slides for us to work with. I can’t wait! I could probably have done without smelling stinky feet though. As I am travelling nonstop with a 12 year old boy, “stinky feet smell” is now just “car smell.”

We next visited the Dias de la Muerta museum, and I have to say this was one of the more unique museums I’ve ever visited. The musuem was the top floor of a large warehouse store selling decor and supplies for Mexican related parties and festivals, like a giant Party City for the Day of the Dead. I’ve literally never seen so many colors at once in my life. The museum was beautiful and educational. Who knew this was what you would get when you squashed Catholicism with ancient Aztec and Mayan traditions? The best part was that they even had the live music perfomance just for us. The singer had a gorgeous voice and sang a traditional sad Dia de las Muertos song (that Mer has informed me is also sung in the Coco movie).

Day 2 and it is finally going to be a nice sunny day! We started early to visit Mission San Jose in the Missions National Historic Park first thing in the morning. It was my first time visiting a mission, so I was thrilled to get to see a part of history I’ve never experienced.

We drove downtown and enjoyed a gorgeous afternoon exploring downtown San Antonio and having lunch along the Riverwalk. Visiting the Alamo has forever been on my bucket list, and we all enjoyed learning about this famous historical site. The audio tour was well worth the extra expense; it did a nice job explaining everything as we walked the building, grounds, and museum. We really like San Antonio; there are so many fun and interesting things to do and see here. We enjoyed the amazing Hemisphere Park downtown where Mer had fun swinging and Graham enjoyed climbing everything. Just walking along the Riverwalk was a treat. There were ducks, pigeons, and people everywhere. I am sure that this is a blast on a Saturday night. We tried to take the boat tour, but the afternoon boats were booked and we didn’t want to wait, so we just walked it all instead. We caught occasional snipets from the boats as they passed, so it was almost like getting the actual boat tour. 😉

Remember the Alamo!

I am so glad we got this one beautiful day to explore downtown! Spoiler alert: it’s going to be several days before we get another one. We are now taking two-days off to rest and recupperate in our hotel. It is going to be rainy and unusually cold and icy all along our route. Since our next stop was supposed to be hiking in the Hill Country, we might as well just stay put and enjoy the pool and hot tub here. We all need a rest; this is about the point we hit the wall with traveling. Our bodies and minds are simply tired. I’ve also had a pretty horrible cold the last couple days. Not COVID (I’ve tested four times in the last week), but one of the other 200+ other cold viruses out there. Thankfully, a friend made the most amazing immune system care package for us to bring with us on the trip. It’s full of vitamins, herbs, and the best netipot I’ve ever used. It has everything you need when trying to fight any infection. Thank you, Katie! The rest and healthy goodies will no doubt have us all energized and ready to travel again in a few days.

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Our second day in Houston was beautiful, high in the 60s and sunny. It was the perfect day to explore driving around downtown before hitting the museum district and Hermann Park. Since it was a Sunday, lots of people were out enjoying the sites. There were kids and dogs playing everywhere; it was a beautiful thing to watch. We started at the Museum of Natural History, where Mer was able to get her dino fix. This museum is fantastic. It’s huge too, so we didn’t get to linger over things for long. The gem and mineral collection was impressive.

There is a new special exhibit there, Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs, that was one of the best traveling exhibits I’ve ever seen. Honestly, I’m shocked Egypt even lets this stuff leave the country. It will be here in Houston until May and then will begin a multi-country tour. Neither words nor pictures will do this justice. The graphics and videos were the best I’ve seen; some were on multi-level screens that allowed you to watch different parts of the story at the same time. I’ve not seen anything quite like it, and it was definitely impressive. There were so many gorgeous artifacts, three mummies, and rooms full of gold. So Much Gold.

Afterwards, we enjoyed a nice walk through Hermann Park, meeting every dog along the way, before spending a couple of hours at the zoo. Like all things in Texas, the zoo was also huge, so we just wandered aimlessly and tried to see animals we hadn’t seen much before. The kids wanted more pictures with the animals, but we weren’t very successful. The capybara cooperated, but that’s just because he didn’t seem to move at all. We probably only covered about a third of the area, but it was a great day to be outside with other people enjoying the weather and animals. Lots of people had rented boats to paddle out on the lake. We considered joining them, but our legs were so tired already that we didn’t think we had the energy left. We decided to wrap up the day by driving the three hours to San Antonio before bedtime. We are all looking forward to experiencing San Antonio and the Alamo for the next few days. The weather is looking like it might be an issue, but we will just take a day or two off if we need to. We could all use a rest right about now.

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Graham got a kick out of his breakfast waffle this morning; they do love their state.

We spent the entire day today at the Johnson Space Center outside Houston. This was a great stop, although I didn’t think it was quite as cool as the Cape Canaveral Center. The kids will see it this summer, as well as the NASA facilities in Huntsville while at Space Camp; I’ll be curious to see how they think the different sites compare. And no, neither of my kids wants to become an astronaut. But they do both love learning anything science or technology-related. And who doesn’t think space travel is cool?

We took the tram tour around the facility, saw several demonstrations and films, and got to touch a piece of the moon! The tour included areas where the astronauts use full-sized mock-ups for training exercises.

The highlight for all of us though was the 30-minute talk by Astronaut Tom Jones. Turns out he used to live in our town, and now lives in Vienna, next door! We loved hearing about his path to becoming an astronaut and the adventures during his four trips into outer space. He’s had over 19 hours of spacewalk time, too. We bought both of his books at the gift shop later that day and were able to chat with him and get them signed. Graham was so star-struck he could barely speak. All he could say was, “He’s been to space!” I guess I was a little starstruck too because I forgot to get a picture of them together.

On the drive to the hotel, we finally got to check out a Buc-ee’s. This was certainly a unique place. Weird, but unique. Glad we stopped, probably don’t ever need to do that again. Graham did try the Frito Burrito and proclaimed it excellent. I was enthralled by the array of different jerkies sold by the pound. Who knew?

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