texas 2016

It has been a month full of travel!!! I realized that I have been in 4 states in 4 weeks...Minnesota – Philadelphia – New Jersey – Michigan – Texas! My mom asked if I was stressed out recently, and I answered no, honestly! Usually this sort of stuff would really wear me down. But I’m all in, and so happy with how full life is. Kind of a bummer my weekends aren’t slowing down really for a few more, but so many more good things to come!

Day 1
I drove right from work to the airport on Thursday last week, and I’m so glad I left a lot of time because traffic was way worse than I expected. I decided to treat myself and park at the airport, which is NOT cheap. But it turned out to be a HUGE blessing for when I returned, more on that to come. My flight was great, it was a small computer plane, so I was happy there was no turbulence. I watched Deadpool on the ride down and it was so good. Landed in TX late, about 9:30 and my pops was waiting. We stayed up and chatted a bit and then hit the hay. He’s living with his GF right now in a cool house near McKinney, TX. She also has two English bulldogs which was hilarious to see my dad care for. Petunia, the older one is blind and 13, so dad helps her around, so sweet. Chumlee is 6 and bigger and cute-ugly to boot.

Day 2
The next morning we woke up slow, but we’re both morning people, so we only slept in till about 8. Which is late for me! Dad worked a bit in the morning, and then we went to Tom + Che for lunch. SO GOOD. Not a texas thing, but still something new. They make donut grilled cheeses you guys. It was pretty darn good. Crazy how you can taste the donut and the grilled cheese and the same time! Then we did a little antiquing and walked around downtown. We were hanging out all day with the hopes that my sis would get on a flight to come join us, but sadly there weren’t enough seats. We told her to just go enjoy her weekend, and instead we stopped at a couple little spots like here and here for brews! It was a great time! I’m such a lightweight too, I was certainly feeling it. On our way home we stopped at Hard Eight for classic BBQ. It was so delicious and everything I imagined! You first enter and go through a line to get your meats of choice from this giant grill. Then through the fixin’s line for tators and bread and what not. Dad got us both HUGE sweet teas. I asked why and he just laughed and said I felt like it was right! He just wanted me to get the true Texas experience ;) After our delicious meal, we went back and watched some TV and had a relaxing night in.

It actually did make me sick that night, but that’s not the foods fault, but rather my messed up tummy.

Day 3
I woke up with the intent to tan, but it ended up being pretty cloudy and stormy outside. We had a slow morning which was super nice and relaxing. A true vacation! At about 2, we left the house and drove to the Plano Dart station. We took the train into Dallas which was super easy. We kind of had to orient ourselves once we actually got off the stop. I didn’t organize as well as I usually do, we ended up walking A TON. But saw a lot of stuff. We had some lunch at the food trucks by this park. We went to the Thanksgiving square which was apparently really cool, but closed like 30 minutes before we got there. That was a bummer. Then we took the trolley to Uptown and went to a place called the Icehouse which was super cool! Uptown actually reminded me a lot of uptown Minneapolis, young, hip crowd. We took the trolley and walked back to downtown, and wanted to make our way to the neighborhood called Deep Ellum. We couldn’t really decide if the train or walking was faster, so we ended up walking. Humbling reminder that you should be careful in cities you don’t know…maybe wasn’t the safest decision. But dad checked out his GPS and noticed that a tap room called Brain Dead was coming up, so we stopped there. It ended up being awesome and had great beer. Right away we could tell this was the neighborhood to be in, a lot like NE Minneapolis. Kinda rugged and hipster. We went to Uncle Ubers for a burger, which was SO good. We split a lot of meals and it worked so well, I gotta remember to do that more. Next we went to Deep Ellum brewery, which seems like a staple brand at bars and such, so that was fun to see. They had a great space and patio too. By about 9:30 we wrapped it up and had to get home for the dogs. We walked to the train station and got on, somehow dad thought the first stop was our transfer, it definitely wasn’t. So after we got off we had to wait another 30 minutes for the next train. But despite this, it was a pretty easy trip back! Green line to downtown, and then redline back to Plano. It was a great adventure for us, and we got a lot of steps in ;)

Day 4
We headed to downtown McKinney for brunch and ended up at the pub. It was so yummy! We got the French toast sandwich (SO GOOD) and eggs benedict and split. Plus bloody marys. After brunch we headed to the property that my dad is hoping to buy on a private skiing lake. So cool! Now we just hope it all works out with contracts and such. We tried to find an ice cream place, dad accidentally took us to a ice cream factory so we ended up at a chain called asdf. Still SO good. The rest of the day was watching a movie and getting ready to head back! We drove through a massive storm to the airport and even saw a bolt of lightning hit a lightpole right by the freeway. My flight was delayed 3 hours, so it ended up being a really long night. I got home about 1am!

All in all a great trip, and so nice to spend time with popsJ