Carson Family Road Trip: The Road Back Home

As the weekend approached, it was finally time to head home.  But thanks to delays on the front half, we had some backtracking to do, including a trip back to Dallas.  The kids were also starting to get a bit tired, so travels were not necessarily pain free.

We left San Antonio around 11a with a four hour trek to Dallas, through the ridiculous highway system in Texas (on-ramp aggressively cross off ramps, which show up all over the place).  I'm honestly surprised we didn't get in an accident, or see any for that matter.  We arrived in Dallas with what we thought was plenty of time to see the 6th Floor Museum, but we honestly could've used more.  However, my son was overly bored and clearly had enough, so it all worked out.  We mostly missed a lot of the conspiracy talk and legacy information, as well as the new National Geographic video exhibit on the 7th floor.  We did learn a ton however, and really got in the mindset of what the US was like as JFK took office, before my time.  It was extremely interesting, and well worth it.

Our next stop was straight to the hotel in Oklahoma City to try and rest up a bit before heading out to the Oklahoma City memorial before heading home.  This proved to be a long trip, as we were all feeling the fatigue.  As you can see in the video, the kids were pretty much done too.

The next morning, we started early at the Oklahoma City Memorial Museum, and once again, learned a ton about something I do remember, but never thought a ton about, as it happened in a pre 9/11 world, where it just didn't make sense, and seemed so isolated, although devastating.  I forgot about the connection to Waco, which we drove through the previous day. During that trek, I explained to the kids what happened there, so to reinforce and connect these two really hit home, at least for my daughter.  Again, we learned so much, in just these 24 hours. I wouldn't recommend it so much for kids around that 5-6yr range or younger, as my son was bored again.  However, it did have many very interactive computer exhibits which he thoroughly enjoyed. In fact, I underestimated how much he learned.  When he found a $22 "rescue puppy" stuffed animal in the museum shop that he wanted to buy, I made him tell me what the dog represented and why it was important if he was to buy it.  And he did, almost perfectly.  When it came time to name the dog, we he chose 'Arlo', which was the name of one of the 4 rescue dogs used during the recovery, who was responsible for saving 22 lives.  I found him reading about the dog during our museum excursion.  For him, if there's dogs, he's very interested.

Thanks to all the information to absorb, we left the city much later than we wanted to, and the fatigue cause some more fights in the car.  Despite those, and the boring drive through the nothingness in Kansas, we made it home close to 1 in the morning.  All in all, it was a fantastic trip, which was relatively painless, even with the over 40 hour drive round trip. We learned a ton, and created so many fantastic family memories.  Hope you enjoyed following along.

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