Stars At Night Are Big and Bright

When we began this adventure, we had a general idea of the path we were going to take across the United States. We knew that for Dad’s job, we had to go up and down the East Coast first, and then enter the West through Texas. I found myself counting down the days until we could get to Texas, and got so excited, I almost missed it. I almost missed being excited about seeing the Saturn V, or the sight of the Boston Massacre, or the Everglades. On several occasions, I found myself thinking, “Yeah, this may be cool, but wait till we get out West. I’ve heard there’s nothing like the views you’ll see out there!” Going through Texas, yes, the views are amazing, but I almost took for granted a whole half of our adventure! I mean, how many kids our age get to travel four states over, much less the entire United States of America!! I don’t want to miss the moment I’m in. That’s practically the whole reason why our parents decided to full time RV. Even in our sticks and bricks, we weren’t a typical family. We purposefully didn’t involve ourselves in too many sports or extracurricular activities so we could spend as much time together as we could. It was a good life that I sometimes miss, the only downfall was that Dad was spent from his job and didn’t have much left over. He chose family over his career, and I respect him more for it. We still do school, and Dad still works; but we’ve accepted more adventure for the time being before life flies by. We wanted to see our country, and experience it as a family, and what better time than now?! Even if you don’t RV like this crazy family does, don’t let life fly on by!

Well, we knew that we wanted to spend a bit of time in Texas, because, to us, that was the beginning of our “out West” adventures. Little did we know how cool it would be, so I decided to just roll the whole month into one post! Here are some highlights:

Lake Livingston was a beautiful park! A couple quick facts about this lake/campground:

• Lake Livingston is the second largest lake solely on Texas land. Most of the lakes in the Lone Star State are man-made to help control the heavy flooding from it’s rivers.
• This amazing state park is one of the VERY few that we’ve found that has full hookups!! For us, that automatically makes it a 5 star rating!
• The town of Livingston isn’t much….in other words, it wasn’t the nicest town we’ve ever been too. BUT, we all had our very first Whataburger experience in that small town; they weren’t too bad!

We did find a short hike in the campground, and took it on Dad’s day off. It was only a mile long, but dirty… Guess who managed to slip on two square feet of mud?!

The thing with Katy Lake was: no children were allowed to stay up to ten days, but it was close to Houston, which was needed for our visit to the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show!! Plus, it was my 16th birthday, which was all kinds of fun:)

We absolutely loveeedd this park! Our site was right on the lake, it was concrete, it had full-hookups, and was in a beautiful location. Even the town’s name was pretty- Flower Mound. We absolutely loved Dallas, and while we were there, we got some history in and visited the Sixth Floor Museum, the assassination site of President John F. Kennedy. If you remember, we started our journey in Ohio and saw the exact plane that carried JFK’s body after he was killed. I guess we did it backwards; visiting the plane that carried his body and then his assassination site. The pile of boxes you’ll see below is a crime scene; Oswald (the assassin) shot out of the buildings’ sixth window. This was the exact way that the boxes were placed that day. I love learning about history in the exact place it happened!

This park was conveniently close to Waco… and the Magnolia Silos! Yes, we did the whole experience: the Magnolia Table, Silos, and shops! Don’t worry, Mom had a blast, and Waco Mammoth National Monument was a neat stop too! Unfortunately, we didn’t get many pictures of the Mammoth, so you’ll just have to take our word for it!

We didn’t spend too much time in Austin; I’m sure there were cool things to do around the area that we missed. We did, however, find a state park with two waterfalls! When we arrived here, it was spring, so we were in for a treat! The blue bonnets were at their peak, and they were beautiful!

Traveler’s World wasn’t the best park we’ve ever stayed at, but maybe that’s because we had the site with the garbage cans in it! San Antonio was very touristy, but very cool. Apparently, it’s nickname is “America’s Venice”, maybe because of the waterways running a throughout the city? Also, the Alamo was so neat to finally see. That was one of those things you learn about in your history textbooks, but seeing it in person really hit it home!

If you look closely at the picture of the Alamo, you’ll see the tourists ducking in front of my camera. I decided to put this one in because I think it’s so relateable and hilarious! I know all of us have done this duck at least once! I can’t take credit for the pic of me taking a pic… that was Matthew practicing angles:)

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Bonus:

We had heard a lot about the stockyards at Fort Worth and the famous cattle drive. Well, we had to check it out, and it was actually pretty cool! The actual cattle drive wasn’t much; just longhorns being walked down the street, but I think we had a little bit more of an exciting time. A couple of the bulls were getting antsy, so one started shoving the one in front with his horn! It was funny watching them get scolded by the cowboy, and one almost appeared to be pouting! The town itself felt extremely touristy, so instead of eating there, we decided to get some grub at a nearby Rudy’s.

You may be wondering why I took a photo of the fire truck; it’s just a truck, right? Well, while I was taking shots to adjust exposure, the fireman driving apparently had a sense of humor and rolled his window down to give a smile and thumbs-up! It made my time at the stockyards!

Alright, that’s it for this week folks! I hope you enjoyed reading up about our time in TX, so drop us a comment or a like when you get a chance! Until next time!