After our two months in Missouri with family for the holidays, we hit the road on January 4th for Texas. It took us two days to get to our first destination, Dallas.
We only spent 5 nights in Dallas, but that was enough. Downtown was pretty cool, especially the “Deep Ellum” area, but the rest is just sprawling concrete suburbia.
The best restaurant we ate at is Terry Black’s BBQ in Deep Ellum – very good bbq! We did have a good time at the art museum in downtown, which ended up being a great free thing to do. There were a number of paintings from “famous” artists, but I think we both mostly enjoyed the landscape paintings.
After our time in Dallas, we made our way to Austin. On the drive, we had to stop at a Texas staple – Buc-ee’s! If you haven’t heard of Buc-ee’s, it’s just a ridiculously big gas station chain. I counted over 100 pumps at one of them. They also have all kinds of food/snacks/etc. inside.
We stayed at McKinney Falls State Park in Austin – it turned out to be an excellent campground. We were only 20ish minutes from downtown, and had plenty of quiet and privacy in our site, plus hiking trails to enjoy. Can’t beat it!
Our main goals in Austin were to see some family and eat lots of food. We did our best on the food!
We also managed to see some family. Thanks Jack, Adrienne, and the kiddos for showing us around! We had a great time seeing you guys.
After our time in Austin, we headed down to San Antonio. We ended up not doing a whole lot here due to me pulling a muscle somehow – but we did manage to get down to the famous River Walk for an evening right before we left.
All in all, we had a good time exploring some of the bigger cities in Texas, but we were ready to get back into nature. Next up, we head to Big Bend National Park!
-Kyle