This weekend The Husband and I joined my Mom and younger siblings for a holiday weekend in Dallas. My mom was meeting Ms. EllynAnne Geisel there and attending her book signing, so we all decided to tag-along and make a vacation of it.

So Friday morningish we set out in a two-vehicle caravan and headed west.

That evening after getting checked into the hotel (complete with a room change when ours ended up having a busted air conditioner, which even in April is doubleplusungood), it was time to head out for a bit of shopping and supper. We decided to drive to up to Frisco to check out the mall and IKEA(!). Now there are several things that contributed to how we spent the next several hours of our lives:

• Being from a relatively rural area, our grasp of the concept of traffic is pretty tentative. Traffic for us is getting stopped at a the red light. So, for those like us, a tip: trying to get out of downtown during rush hour in Dallas, Texas probably not the best idea ever.
• Never take directions for granted. Apparently to some people “will take you right to it” is synonymous with “will take you at least 10 miles out of the way, which if you weren’t paying closer attention, you wouldn’t even realize until you were in Oklahoma”. How in the name of all that is holy did people travel before GPS and cell phones?
• If you find yourself navigating busy, unfamiliar highways late in the evening, it’s probably a good idea that arrangements be made for the pilot of your vehicle to be not night blind, as proficiency in echolocation in humans is quite rare. If you are the aforementioned night blind pilot, the next morning is probably the latest one should speak up and remind the other occupants of your affliction. Someone else being inconvenienced by driving is still preferable to everyone involved dying in a fiery car crash.

All that being said, we did eventually find Frisco, some supper and IKEA. Of course, we realized after an hour in IKEA that we had only made it about a 16th of the way through.

The next day was devoted to exploring downtown. We headed down to Dealey Plaza to check out the Grassy Knoll, etc. While there, we spoke to some of the conspiracy theorist that were there hawking books, dvds and such. One of them was a man that (supposedly) was there near the Knoll that day. True or not, we had a good time. We were hoping to have time to do the book depository tour, but there just wasn’t enough time.

Next we walked down to the Dallas World Aquarium. It was crowded (why did no one tell the poor homeschoolers about aquariums on Saturday?) and warm, but it made for some great photo opportunities. By the way, I want a manatee for my birthday this year.

The next morning we packed up, checked out and headed to IKEA for final purchases before the drive home. Another tip: Always be sure to measure just how much you can fit in your vehicle before buying a metric asston of stuff at IKEA 300 miles from home (pictures of purchases coming, soon hopefully). Thankfully, it all fit, but it was touch and go there for awhile.

PS more pictures are available at my flickr photostream