Some Texas Hospitality

Our only full day in Dallas was spent visiting the 6th Floor Museum and experiencing some true Texan hospitality. The 6th floor museum is on the 6th floor of the building where Lee Harvey Oswald was when he shot JFK during his visit to Dallas in 1963. The museum was extremely well laid out, as it told a complete story, starting with JFK's campaign, and going through the assassination and onto the controversy and aftermath of the event. They also played videos throughout the floor that set up very well with building suspense and made it seem like a movie in itself. It was very eerie to see the window that Oswald was looking out, and to see his perspective of one of America's greatest tragedies. I would highly recommend the museum for anyone in Dallas who is even close to a history buff. Kristal and I both learned a lot of new things, the main one being that JFK made the Peace Corps. Neither one of us knew that. Overall, a great experience and the highlight of my early trip so far. Well until the next day.

The day was capped with a true family BBQ at Shayna's house. Filled to the brim with family and friends, we had some great home-cooked BBQ chicken, corn, and lots of desserts. While in the historic West End of Dallas, we found a great cookie shop and bought a dozen to contribute to the event. 

After leaving Dallas, Kristal and I stopped by the new Cowboys stadium in Arlington, and from the outside, it looked like the biggest stadium I have seen. And the inside didn't disappoint. After walking through the pro shop, we were able to walk into the stadium, where we got our first look at the one of a kind ridiculously huge jumbo tron. It extends from one 20 yard line all the way to the other, covering an absurd 80 yards. My favorite part of it were the regular sized jumbo trons that were on both endzone sides. While its designed for the endzone crowd to see the replays, I'm sure Jerry Jones wanted to show how large his new screen was in comparison.

After taking some photos, we went into the Cowboys locker room, where they let you try on the jersey, pads, and helmets of Tony Romo, Miles Austin, and Demarcus Ware. I was surprised to see that I actually fit pretty easily into Ware's pads, meaning we are similar size. Sadly, he is just a bit more athletic then me. After that, we went into the press room, followed by the Cowboy's cheerleader locker room. We decided to hang out on the field again after that, and even timed our runs of the 40 yard dash. Professional Football players speeds vary from 4.2 seconds for the top players and 5.2 for the heavy set offensive linemen. We ran it in....around 7 seconds. Yeah, I don't foresee a professional football career in either of our futures.

After that, our tour was done, which was unfortunate cause I wanted to check out the fountain show that was on the 2nd floor. Overall, it truly is a one of a kind stadium, and one that I'm sure several stadiums will be modeled from down the line.

Lastly, we hit Austin this afternoon and immediately crashed for a couple hours. After that, we drove into downtown to the Congress Bridge, where at around 9 PM, a huge colony of bats is said to fly out at night. I was hoping for a huge cloud of them to come out all at once, but it ended up mainly being about 5-10 of them at a time. A little disappointing, but overall it was pretty cool. After that, we walked down to 6th street in the heart of downtown. It was fairly low key considering its a Monday in summer, but I can definitely see how it would be a great place to be on a Friday or Saturday night. We ended up at Darwin's pub, where we grabbed some Shwarmas and free soda, and played a few games of trivia. I ended up winning on the night, cause I'm totally smarter. (Kristal: Although, I placed 25th in the entire nation in one round, but whatever. no big) And that was it for our first night in Austin! Thanks for reading.