Dallas and the Texas State Fair

The second weekend of October, I went on another road trip but a much shorter one this time to Dallas! The 200 mile drive seemed like nothing compared to the 1000 mile drive to Iowa and it was nice. I went with my boyfriend Kevin as a part of our epic date weekend and we had such a blast! Friday night we went into downtown Austin to Stubb's and saw an incredible show by Monsters of Folk. We got there relatively early and snagged a great spot towards the front. Once the crowd filled in though, I was still too short to see the band as a whole but I managed to watch one band member at a time, switching my stance and finding new windows in the crowd to look through. Kevin, who stands at 6'3 in comparison to my 5'1, would lift me above the crowd occasionally so I could see everyone at once which was incredibly sweet and helpful. After the show, we went down 6th Street and met up with one of his best friends Cody and Cody's family who were visiting from California. We had a couple of beers and I taught Kevin how to Texas Two Step which he picked up pretty quickly. We then drove back up to North Austin and slept, awaiting the next branch of our weekend adventure: Dallas.

Expecting chilly weather, we dressed for the occasion but ended up taking the top off of the car and changing into shorts once we got there because it had gotten so warm. The drive up there was nice and relaxing. I napped a bit in the first hour and we fed our nostalgic tendencies by playing bands we listened to in our most vulnerable and angst filled teenage years, which mirrored each other nicely. After we arrived in Dallas, got lost in Oak Cliff, and then continued to drive around looking for parking for an hour, we managed to snag a wonderful spot in someone's back yard that was converted into State Fair parking, and started the couple block walk to the fair. Upon arrival, we bought coupons to use for rides and food, actually worrying that we had bought too many. Little did we realize all the amazing rides they had there and by the end of the day ended up buying at least four times as many coupons. The first thing we did was spend the entire first batch of coupons on way too much food. We got a turkey leg, two hot dogs, french fries with cheese, two beers, and a water bottle. The turkey leg was great and Kevin enjoyed the "I am man, hear me roar" aspect of carving into a massive amount of meat with his teeth. We sat in a gravel offshoot of a garden to eat and therefor had to balance our food in our arms to not get it in the gravel. I laid one hot dog on each leg as I sat indian style but in an uncoordinated movement to take a sip of beer, one hot dog rolled off of my thigh face down into the gravel. We were a bit devastated and buried it.

After eating, we bought more coupons and went on a couple of rides. Even just waiting in the queue made me crazy homesick for Disney World. Of course the State Fair, as impressive as it is, doesn't come close to Disney but just that all too familiar feeling of being in a theme park with people you love to be around was consuming me. The rides themselves were pretty intense and a bit scary. I had to put on a brave face though and I'm glad I did because they were a ton of fun. One we went on, called Rock-It, was especially thrilling. I was really scared waiting in line and was sort of regretting my decision to get on it, but once we rode it, I had my arms up in the air and it was amazing. I think I was less scared than Kevin was in the end, although he'll deny it.

After that, we went and sat down to relax for a bit after that rush of adrenaline and took cute pictures.

We hung out for a bit, walked around for a bit, and waited for the sun to start setting so we could ride the largest ferris wheel in North America when the Texas sun wasn't slowly baking us as we rotated through the air. First we rode the Texas Skyway, walked around a bit more, then it was time to wait in the line for the ferris wheel that seemed to go on for blocks.

 

The ferris wheel was unbelievable. It's 212 feet tall and just when you think you're as high as you can possibly be on a ferris wheel, you look up and see that you're only half way to the top. Its exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. The family we were with helped tame my fears as they were hilarious and really friendly, which was an excellent distraction from my unwarranted and unavoidable fear of heights. 

 After we were far too exhausted to continue at the fair, we found a hotel off of the interstate and crashed for the night. The next day, we headed back into Dallas to explore downtown before going back home to Austin. First stop was energy drinks and sunscreen because poor Kevin attracts the sun to his face with uncanny ability. Did you see all of those adorable freckles? We filled the parking meter with all the change we could find and then set out walking around the historical district of downtown Dallas. After a couple of blocks, we asked a hotel doorman how far the Kennedy assassination site was and walked that direction. Along the way, Kevin is geeking out about all of the history surrounding us and we run from one side of the street to the other taking pictures while he impressively recites the significance of each historical marker or statue. After a brief visit with Rosa Parks' statue, we walked a bit further and found the grassy knoll and the site of Kennedy's assassination. We took pictures, read all of the historical plaques, then sat in the grass for a bit contemplating the severity of the situation at the time. If something like that happened in front of me to our president now, I don't even know what I would do. Lose faith most certainly. The historical plaque on the Texas Schoolbook Depository read that this was the building the shot was fired from but because nothing was ever proved, the word allegedly was included in the phrasing, a word someone believed in very strongly as they carved into the plaque underlining it and peeling back the metal.  After Kevin filled me in on all the details I had forgotten since I had learned them in school and we strolled around for a bit longer, we headed back to the car and began the drive back to Austin.

On the drive back home, Kevin played me some music I hadn't heard before which is always nice. Once we got to Carl's Corner, we decided to pull off the interstate and see Willy's Place, a combination gas station, restaurant, and saloon put together by Willie Nelson. We had seen it on the way to Dallas but didn't have time to stop so we made a point to on the way home. We walked around the gift shop, Kevin bought some gifts for his parents, and we sat and had a couple of beers in the saloon. We started making conversation with some of the truckers passing through and talked about where they'd been and where they were headed. One of them was really sweet and asked us when our wedding was. haha. After we finished our beers, we got back in the car and headed the rest of the way home to Austin. It was such a fun trip and an amazing date adventure weekend. I can't wait to go on more with him <3

Into the Midwest

We're halfway through the month today and a lot has happened.


The first weekend this month I drove a total of 36 hours through the Midwest to visit my friend Chip in Ames, Iowa for 48 hours. By myself. The drive was incredible. Roadtripping by yourself is definitely different than being with other people. Naturally you get an independence when you're driving by yourself. You can stop whenever you want to, take as long as you want to, make little side trips to interesting things along the way, and all the while having no one to discuss or argue your plans with. There isn't much to see from Austin, Texas to Ames, Iowa but I did manage to stop at Turner Falls, Oklahoma half way through the state. It took me forever to actually find the falls, but at the top of a giant hill I saw them. I wanted to swim there so badly but I was in a hurry to get to Iowa so I just waved from a distance.

I met two bikers on Harley's that were really nice to me. They were extremely worried that I was driving so far by myself and offered me a few general road trip tips. Then they made fun of me for being a Texas Longhorn, haha.

I continued on through the rest of Oklahoma, then Kansas, then Missouri. I spent the night and the next morning I was caught in traffic in Kansas City, Missouri and while traffic usually frustrates the hell out of me, I didn't mind it that day because I was in the middle of downtown and that city is beautiful. I had to talk myself out of exiting every 5 minutes to go explore the city. I'll definitely be back some day to walk around and take pictures and of course try some bbq! On the way out from Kansas City, the interstate returned to two lanes and I was driving through a lot of nothingness for a while, until I saw a sign for this:

Of course you had to exit the interstate, drive through a couple of ten minute long towns, and cruise down a gravel road for eight miles, but eventually you'll get to the home of Jesse James. The woman staffing the museum was such a sweet old lady. She talked my ear off and you could tell they didn't get a lot of visitors each day because it was in the middle of B.F.E. like everything out there. You were supposed to pay $8 to tour the property but after I turned down the tour offer because I was broke and had little time, the woman secretly gave me directions to the house and told me to avoid the tour if I saw them. hahaha. You had to walk through the woods a bit to get to the actual house.

The house is tiny and cute. It definitely fits your idea of Missouri pre-turn of the century. Out back was a tombstone for Jesse. The woman in the museum told me its pretty new, made in the 1970s or something, because people would visit Jesse's grave and chip away pieces of his tombstone to take as souvenirs so the original one was just a small uneven block of stone now. I'm not sure if this is how the original one read or if the appreciation of Jesse in the modern world had something to do with it, but either way I like it.

After I left Jesse's house, I continued on through the rest of Missouri and a bit of Iowa before reaching Chip's house. My heart was exploding with excitement when I saw him run out into the middle of the road as I drove up his street. We were best friends when we worked at Disney World together and had spent every day with each other for the five months we were in Florida. It was a week short of five months since we had seen each other in May so we had gone through quite the withdrawal without each other. We hugged for five minutes then pulled up some lawn chairs and had a beer and smoked a cigarette in his driveway. That moment was exactly what I was looking forward to in the weeks preceding this drive. Just a moment to chill and be happy. Afterwards, we went inside, unpacked, then drove around Ames looking at the Iowa State campus in his Jeep Wrangler with the top down. The campus was beautiful, the weather was beautiful, I was cruising around in the car I've wanted since I was 16 and I was on vacation. It was wonderful. We went back to Chip's house so he could get ready for his very first fraternity event and after he left I played on the computer and watched Wizards of Waverly Place for a few hours. When he got home, we changed into different outfits about three times and then walked down the street to catch the Drunk Bus, a complimentary city bus just for carting students through the bar lined streets of Campustown. We drank a lot of tequila and beer, I was kissed on the cheek by a chiropractor, we karaoked and two-stepped, and did the Bad Romance dance. It was just like old times at Disney. haha. Feeling pretty good, we caught the Drunk Bus home and Chip proceeded to sing Miley Cyrus to the whole bus, who surprisingly weren't upset about it at all. We walked to his house from the bus stop, put on pajamas, and danced to the Hoedown Throwdown before passing out.

That last one is our rendition of the Bed Intruder song. haha.

The next morning, we drove the half hour into Des Moines to see downtown and the Iowa State Capital Building. It was beautiful! It certainly doesn't look like it belongs in Iowa of all places.

After searching for the  door to get inside for a good while, we finally made it in with 20 minutes left until the building closed because it was a Saturday. The security guard warned us of the time restraint and Chip replied in that we only wanted to see the library since it was the inspiration for the library in Disney's Beauty and the Beast (fun fact!). The library was locked up as it turned out but the guard was so nice and intrigued by our Disney knowledge that he escorted us to the library and unlocked the door for us so we could see it and take pictures. It was awesome!

 

After we left the capital, we drove through downtown Des Moines and stopped off at the Sculpture Garden there. 

   

 

After we left the Sculpture Garden, we drove around for a bit then parked and walked around a cute little section on the outskirts of downtown with a bunch of shops and gay friendly stores and bars. We went into Blazing Saddles, a gay Irish pub, and split a pitcher while talking to a few guys around us. It was an excellent way to say goodbye to the afternoon. When we were finished, we drove home, ate delicious meat loaf, watched part of Speed Racer and then got ready to hit downtown Ames again. 

   

The next day, I packed everything up for my drive back home and Chip and I went back near Iowa State campus to see the World's largest garden gnome. haha. 

Then we had our tearful goodbye and I started the long drive home. To make my drive more interesting, I decided to drive home a different way that I came and went through Omaha, Nebraska then on to Hastings, the nearest town to the Geographic Center of the United States, my fun excursion to break up my driving days. Standing in the center of the US was a strange feeling. It definitely felt like the middle of nowhere as the nearest city was 30 miles away. There was no one out there and it was freezing and windy as all hell. I attempted to take pictures of myself to document this moment in my life as I'm sure I'll never ever go to the middle of Kansas ever again. Self timer helped. 

 (The historical marker stating the exact center of the Continental United States)

(The church that sat six people. Of course no one was there, but I left a note. )

(Zombie Elvis, my travel companion)

After that, I drove another 12 hours home and that was that. All in all,  it was a really fun trip. I expected to just have fun seeing Chip but the Midwest does have some cool stuff to see and do after all, as sparse and spread out as it may be. haha.