Day 7 (2018) - Fly Away Home

Today was our last day on the road, and our day started early (and cold) with a tour of the Texas Rangers' ballpark, Globe Life Park. As we learned yesterday while touring the football stadium, this is the last year the Rangers will use this ballpark, with their new one being built now on the other end of the parking lot. When they built the current park in 1992-1994 either retractable roofs were not an option, or it was a massive and expensive oversight. While it was cold today (37 when we left the hotel), it is brutally hot in the summer and can get uncomfortable for fans, especially during day games. The new park will have the coveted retractable roof.

Putting the X in Texas

The park is currently being used for a holiday activity, so the field doesn't look anything like it would during the season.

Not exactly game ready conditions

The tour took us to the press box, a suite, the batting cages, the interview area, and the Rangers dugout. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to go into the Rangers clubhouse because of some previous issues on tours where people didn't leave with the rest of the tour and things went missing. What is wrong with people?

Any questions?

No more questions

Stop the presses!

Good to know the Alligator and Elk jerky options are Gluten Free

Another interesting option at the ball park

After the tour we made our usual donation to the team gift store, and headed down the street to a place called Texas Live, which is basically an upscale food court with many large TVs. I would imagine that the place is typically busy, but with the Clemson-Notre Dame game taking place a few hundred yards away in a few hours, the place was kind of like a fraternity party on steroids.

Pre-tailgating. Notice all of the orange and green attire.

We were never going to get a seat at any of the restaurants, so I looked up someplace to eat that was between where we were and DFW Airport. I found a place that seemed to have a decent menu called The Ranch and made a quick reservation. Turns out that (a) we really did not need a reservation and (b) the food was really good. Stunningly, after we finished lunch we passed on dessert and headed to the airport, which was only about 10 minutes away.

Giddyup

I dropped everyone off so they could check our one piece of luggage that needed to get checked, then headed to return the car (which was so far away I thought I was heading back to Houston).

The flight home was uneventful, and thanks to the fact that the seat configuration was 2+2 Debbie was guaranteed (hopefully) not to have a nauseating seatmate (Amanda was on her best behavior to make sure).

So ends our latest road trip. Things have changed quite a bit since our first trip in 2010, but some things have stayed the same. The kids are much older, more opinionated, and much less enamored with some of the quirky side trips we make. They remain more of a hands-on group, and still enjoy a good meal. And as annoyed as they sometimes get with those side trips, they likely will remember things like the Toilet Bowl Museum or the saloon in Montana or the "throwed rolls restaurant" or Debbie's face after getting into the St. Louis Arch elevator for the rest of their lives.

A classic

I am very thankful that we did all of these trips, and I am sure they are also. The thought of doing a trip like this back in April or May of this year was the furthest thing from my mind, or any of our minds, so I don't take these trips for granted.

I have no idea if/when we will do another trip that is "blog-worthy" so for anyone that has read these daily summaries, thanks. It truly started out in 2010 as simply a way for me to write down some of the stuff we did so we would have a record of it. I sometimes go back and look at the old posts just for fun, and they make me smile. I hope they did for you as well.

As I said before at the end of one of the other trips - until next time, if there is a next time.

Day 6 (2018) - Too Late

Today was a long day of travel and sightseeing, but the day didn't go quite as planned. We woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel and got on the road a little after 8:00. The drive to Dallas is a bit under 4 hours, and I had marked a few places to stop along the way - partly to break it up and partly to see some other unusual things.

The first stop was an hour outside of Houston and, fittingly, it was to see a very large statue of Sam Houston. The statue is just off the highway we were taking to Dallas, and on a cold day in December we were the only ones there (other than a few workers). The statue took two years to build and is visible from the highway, but that would not work for photos. We got out of the car and made the short walk to the statue and took the obligatory photo, which evidently is the most photographed statue in the state. For the most part, the statue is pretty impressive, other than the mismatched letters which drove Debbie nuts. For a statue to be the most photographed in the state you would think they would make a little extra effort to make it all look professional and neat.

The big man, literally

Get the man matching letters, please

We got back into the car for a short ride to the next stop - a house that is built to look like a cowboy boot. And when we got there we realized we got more than we bargained for, since the house next door has a large cowboy hat on it. I can only imagine how the architectural review board in Great Neck would respond if someone went in with these plans.

This would go over well in Great Neck

We took a quick photo and got back on the road, heading to a BBQ place I had noted. This place, called Cattleack BBQ, is only open two days a week (Thursdays and Fridays) and only from 10:30-2, or until they run out of food. That last part was clearly the key part to understand. When we arrived around 12:30 there was a line out the door to get in. I dropped everyone but Amanda off (she was still waking up from her car nap) and found a place to park. By the time she and I joined the others they had already made an announcement that they were out of turkey and beef ribs. And about 2 minutes later they made another announcement that said it was highly doubtful that they would still have food left for anyone standing in line. With heavy heads and hungry stomachs, we left.

I had also noted a drive-in not far from the BBQ place as a backup, so I suggested we head there. The crew was not all that enthusiastic about that idea, so Debbie found a different BBQ place about 20 minutes away called Lockhart Smokehouse. This was actually a smokehouse, where you order by the pound and then get a table to eat it. There was also a line at this place, but at least they had plenty of food. Debbie found a table while the boys and I stood in line. We weren't really sure how much to get, so our first thought was to get a pound each of the brisket and turkey and a half pound of ribs. But as we watched others place their orders we started to think that wasn't enough. When it was our turn I told the guy I needed enough for 5 people, and he started slicing. We ended up with (I think) 1.5 pounds of brisket, a little over a pound of turkey and 1.5 pounds of ribs. We grabbed a bunch of sides - potato salad, regular coleslaw, blue cheese coleslaw (2) and ordered mac 'n cheese and beans. After taking out a second mortgage we gathered up all of the food and headed to the table, where we chowed down on everything.

Before the carnage

I would agree about the sauce, but we kinda needed forks

Starting the carnage

The Menu

The meat

After the carnage

Not surprisingly, we ordered a little too much, but it was clearly better to order too much than too little since by the time we were done the line had basically doubled in size. What was not taken into consideration when planning the trip was that the college football semifinals are scheduled for Saturday, so the town is overrun by Clemson and Notre Dame fans - all wearing their respective school colors. We clearly got there at the right time (a line spoken more than a few times on the trip). After eating too much of the food that we ordered too much of, we threw away the rest and checked out the area a little before heading to the Sixth Floor Museum.

We got to the museum around 2:30, only to find out that they were sold out of tickets for the day. The parking guy we spoke with said it was a bit of chaos today with all of the people from Clemson and Notre Dame in town, and the museum was packed all day. Debbie went to see if there was any way we could get in, but was told no. The only option was to buy tickets for tomorrow at 11:30, but with a flight at 2:50 that would be cutting it too close. We parked in the lot (illegally) and walked around Dealey Plaza a little. We saw the X marks in the street where Kennedy was shot and stopped by a conspiracy table. We then headed to the museum gift store, where there was also a line to get in, and looked around a little and bought a few souvenirs.

Where the first shot hit JFK

And where the second did

Where the shots were fired from

Or was THIS where they were fired from???

It was now about 3:30 and we were in no man's land. We had a tour of AT&T Stadium scheduled for 6:00 and it took about 30 minutes to get there. We could not really think of anything to do so we (reluctantly) headed to the hotel in Arlington. We checked in a little after 4:00 and basically sat in the room until we were ready to leave (although I typed most of this while waiting). I also booked a tour of the Texas Rangers ballpark for the morning, before we were too late and that got sold out also.

We left for the stadium around 5:30 and got there around 5:45. The tour was at 6:00 and they started taking us up the escalator at 5:55. That means we had 10 minutes of standing around right in front of the Cowboys gift shop. Right before the tour was about to start they announced that if anyone wanted anything from the gift shop they should go back down now and do it quickly, as the store would not be open when we finished. So as not to be late, again, today, we ran down and got a few things (Cotton Bowl sweatshirt for Brian and Cowboys t-shirt for Amanda, Ethan opted out).

I paid and hurried back up to the tour, which had just gotten moving. Our tour was very large, filled almost exclusively with fans of either Clemson (in their orange outfits) or Notre Dame (in their green and blue outfits). I truly believe that if we had been on this tour on Monday we might have been the only ones on it. The tour guide was nice and peppy and showed us around the massive stadium - we went into Jerry Jones' small private suite where he watches the games (but not his 4,000 square foot private suite), a regular suite, the Cowboy Cheerleaders' locker room (passing on any jokes here to be safe) and the Cowboys' locker room. We passed by the Press Box and went into the area of seats at field level, which really aren't great seats since you are actually below the field level and behind of the team benches. Not sure what you can really see on game day from that vantage point, but I am sure you can hear a lot.

The calm before the storm

The reason the tour was so full

The place is LAAAARGE

How 'bout them kids?

Just to prove we were there also

After the tour ended and we purchased the obligatory photo, we left Jerry's World and headed to dinner nearby. Dinner was nothing to get too descriptive about, but after dinner we (or 60% of "we") could not pass up the chance to get some warmed up cookies at the cookie store next to the restaurant. Those cookies were pretty much gone before we got out of the parking lot, and we headed back to the hotel for the evening.

Tomorrow we head home, but not before going on a tour of the Rangers' ballpark (which we learned this evening is being replaced in 2020 with a brand new stadium nearby). Then we will head to the airport and fly home. It's supposed to be pretty cold tomorrow (around 37 at tour time) so I am hoping they will show us a lot of indoor stuff.

Day 5 (2018) - Fun and Games

Today was supposed to be an educational day, with a trip to the George HW Bush Presidential Library in College Station. But the government shutdown put the kibosh on that so we had to improvise. I'm not sure that missing the library was the worst thing in the world, since I have learned in the 8 years that we have done road trips that the kids really aren't all that excited, or interested in, museums where you have to look at things and read about them. They have always been way more of a hands-on group, and nothing has really changed since 2010 when we did our first trip. Yesterday's NASA expedition was no exception. So when plans changed yesterday and we started talking about other things to do, they were not all that keen on my idea to go to the National Museum of Funeral History, despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews it received.

So I told them last night to find something else to do, and Brian suggested a place called Top Golf, and we planned our day around that. First things first though - we had to eat a ridiculously good, high-calorie breakfast. To achieve that lofty goal, we headed to The Breakfast Klub. This is another one of those simple, local places, where you order at the counter and find a table. The line had already formed around the building when we arrived there around 10:00, but it moved relatively quickly, and as soon as we knew it we were ordering. And order we did. For the table we got orders of wings-n-waffles and biscuits and gravy because, well, why not? We all ordered some version of eggs for ourselves and the food came out pretty quickly and was eaten just as fast.

It's biscuits, it's gravy, how can this be bad?

Not exactly sure why these go together, but glad they do

After breakfast, we headed to the golf place. Just as we were finishing breakfast I made a reservation for noon, but we actually arrived closer to 11:15. Since we had a reservation they moved us way up in the waiting list for a driving bay, and we were called around 11:30. So, Top Golf is an interesting concept. At its core it's a driving range, but the difference is that on the ground are circles around pins at varying distances. You get points for both accuracy and distance, so if you get it in a circle (on the fly or on a roll) you get points, and you get more points for the closer you get to the pins and even more points the further away those pins are. Got it?

First thing you have to do is buy a lifetime membership for $5. Not only are we members of NASA, we are now also all members of Top Golf. That's a very exclusive club. To play you first decide how long you want to play, so we selected an hour. Then you choose the game. The basic game is where every player gets 20 balls to amass the most amount of points. The other games are more about accuracy and hitting certain targets. Considering the wide range (pun intended) of golf ability in our group, we opted for the basic game.

I went first, and started by trying to chip into the closest circle. But after a few chips that just missed, and got no points, I started to ramp up the swings, first going to an iron, then to a 3-wood. That proved to be a better strategy since I was getting points for distance, and even the ones that didn't immediately hit their target ended up rolling into the next one. I hit all 20 of my shots, then everyone else took turns.

As I mentioned, there was a gap in golf skill in the group, but that really didn't matter since even rolled shots often ended up in a circle and got points. So playing "hero ball" and just wailing away with a driver (not gonna say who took this approach, but congrats on his upcoming college graduation) was not necessarily the optimal plan, especially when said driver did not always produce accurate shots.

We all hit our 20 shots each, and the winner was not exactly a surprise. Again, not going to name names, but a small clue is that this person is the one typing this clue.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

But everyone had fun and since we had already used up 45 minutes of our hour on the first round we extended it another hour. The second time around we changed things up and decided to hit 5 balls at a time, to rotate more and allow for less just waiting around. Some of us (most of us) liked this plan, some (one) didn't. Anyway, everyone came up with their own strategies as to how they wanted to play it, and we again crowned a winner (same as the first winner).

Just sayin'

But really, we were all winners (but one won more than the others). We extended play another 15 minutes so we could get one more turn through, and finally wrapped up around 2:00.

Again passing on the funeral museum idea, Debbie found another escape the room place not too far way that had availability at 2:30, so we headed there. We got there right before 2:30, quickly signed up and headed into the Sherlock Holmes room to try and escape. This time it was just us in the room, and we all added some help to get us through, although we did utilize more than a few clues. With minimal infighting, we successfully escaped with about 8 minutes to spare.

It was almost 3:30 when we left, so we headed back to the hotel to rest a little before our early dinner. The Rockets-Celtics game was at 7:00 CT. I had made a reservation at a restaurant in the hotel at 5:15 because the Toyota Center, where the Rockets play, is literally around the corner from the hotel, and I wanted someplace where we could just walk to the game. The meal was fine, nothing special, and we headed to the game around 6:30 (and got there at 6:35). The Flash Seats app that I needed to use to get us into the game was acting strange (turns out it wasn't just me, others were having problems also) but it ended up fine and we found our seats.

The game started a little after 7:00 CT, and the Rockets built an early big lead but the Celtics made a run in the 2nd quarter to get it close at halftime. However, the Rockets hit about 549 three-point shots and eventually pulled away to win by double digits.

Boooooooo

James Harden had 45 points, but it was definitely not your father's style of basketball. He hit 9 three-pointers and made 14 free throws (with at least 5 or 6 of them coming after being fouled while taking three-pointers), so if you do the math that means he only made two 2-point shots.

Fun was had by all, except the Celtics and their fans

Despite the loss, the game was fun, and Debbie particularly enjoyed the Rockets' announcer. He was VERY animated with any announcements that had to do with the Rockets, but channeled Eyeore when announcing positive things for the Celtics. It's hard to do it justice in text, but the difference was dramatic and funny. After the game ended we walked back to the hotel. Tomorrow is our last full day and it will be a long, busy day, starting with a drive to Dallas, with some funky stops along the way. The plan for Dallas is to see the JFK stuff in the afternoon and take a tour of Jerry's World (aka AT&T Stadium) at 6.

Day 4 (2018) - Houston, We Have a (Rain) Problem

Today was NASA day. When we woke up we looked at the weather forecast and it said a high of 65. Sounds good, no? No. More on that later. We started out with a deluxe breakfast at the Embassy Suites and then headed about a half hour to NASA and arrived there around 10am. It was already drizzling a little, and the wind was picking up. I went to the ticket booth to get our tickets and asked about the family membership package, as it seemed like that was a good deal. But the lady in the booth convinced me (or bullied me) that it was better to just get single tickets for everyone, so that's what we did.

We went inside and headed for the tram tours, as that seemed to be the popular thing to do. There are two versions of the tram tour - one that goes to the Mission Control building and the other that goes to the astronaut training building. The Mission Control line was 30 minutes and the training center line was 90 minutes, so we headed for the former. But we also learned that members have their own line that gets you to the front of the line. After waiting in line for a while, we decided to see about upgrading and Debbie went out to the info center to check out the story. Basically, for about $30 we could upgrade, so we did. We are now proud members of the Johnson Space Center (for a year). Since we were already near the front of the line at this point we just stayed where we were and got on the next tram. The trams are open on the sides, and they make two worrisome announcements before leaving - first, if it rains you are likely to get wet and second, there are no bathrooms on the route until the end. Not sure which was more concerning to me.

At this point, the tram ride was simply cold, as it wasn't raining. We drove by a bunch of buildings and our tour guide gave some interesting facts about space travel, like how the spines of astronauts can grow 6 inches while in space. The tour guide spoke too fast, and in a monotone style and I think had the mic too close to her mouth. Other than that she was great (sarcasm). We stopped for 15 minutes at Mission Control where we got off the tram and went up to a viewing area where we learned about how Mission Control works.

We got back on the tram and headed to the building where an old, unused Saturn rocket is housed. This rocket was to be used on the Apollo 18 mission, which never happened once they scrapped the moon missions in the early 1970s.

Anyone need a rocket?

After walking around the rocket for a while we headed back to the tram for the ride back to the main building. At this point the weather was looking more ominous, so we decided to have a little snack and head to the second tram tour before it got too bad out. And this time we used the members-only line to get to the front of the line, which had now grown to a 2-hour wait. The joke of it is that no one actually looked at our ticket to make sure we were actual members. In reality, anyone could have just gone into the member line, but we were legit.

The second tour guide was much better, she had pep, made some jokes, spoke clearly and also imparted some facts about space travel - like how the spines of astronauts can grow 3 inches while in space.

After getting off of the tram and checking out the training center, we returned the tram. At this point, the weather had gone from ominous to lousy, with strong misty rain and COLD wind. Remember how they said that if it rained we might get wet? They weren't lying. Brian was sitting on one end of the rows of seats and bore the brunt of the rain and was pretty wet by the time we got back to the main building. We were all wet and cold, and Debbie had clearly wasted a lot of time doing her hair in the morning, as by now it was all wet and curly.

Miss Curly Q

She is now the proud owner of a NASA hat.

Amanda is in there somewhere

By now it was close to 2:30 and the gang was hungry (and cranky) and didn't really want to eat NASA food, so we headed to the car to go someplace and eat and possibly come back after to see more. But as we were sitting in the car trying to figure out where to do, we realized the two places I had in mind were either closing at 3 or had already closed. So we decided, reluctantly, to go back in and get NASA food and see some more stuff. We had a scrumptious meal (again, sarcasm) then headed to a presentation on life on the International Space Station, where we learned some interesting facts about space travel - like how the spines of astronauts can grow 2 inches while in space. Yes, three people talked about the same issue with space travel and gave three different measurements for spinal growth. I really hope the math that the actual rocket scientists are doing at NASA are a tad more precise.

The final exhibit that we wanted to see (and at this point in the day by "we" I am excluding any college or high school aged humans in our group) was the jumbo jet that carried the space shuttles from place to place and a mock space shuttle sitting on top of it. We went up the stairs and into the jumbo jet and some of us spent more time than others reading the various exhibits and then went up further to the shuttle.

Photo was taken on the way in,
before everyone was cold, wet and cranky

By 4:15 we had wrapped up, much to the chagrin of the school-aged humans (once more, sarcasm), and headed back to the hotel to rest, warm up and get ready for dinner. Tonight's dinner was a bigger hit than last night's, thanks in no small part to sitting inside and not being freezing. Plus the food (Mexican) at Original Ninfa's was really good. Their steak fajitas were on a list of "must eats" in Houston, so who am I to go against that advice and I ordered that. Brian got ribs (I think from about 7 cows). Amanda got tacos, Ethan had a fajita mix of steak and chicken and Debbie got salmon tacos.

Soup meant for a giant

"Nacho" average nachos...

No, this was not family-style dining

You won't see these at Taco Bell

Happy diners

Everything was really good and WAY too much to eat. The huge portions filled us all up so we skipped dessert tonight (I just can't stop with the sarcasm).

It may be officially called "tres leches cake"
but it should be called "millones de calorías cake"

We finished up at dinner and headed back to the hotel and unfortunately were not able to go for a walk to futilely try and walk off some of dinner due to the weather.

The original plan for tomorrow was to drive to College Station and go to the George HW Bush Presidential Library. But thanks to the government shut down most of the library is closed. So we will be calling an audible and figure out something to do before we head across the street from the hotel and go to the Celtics-Rockets game.