This year for Thanksgiving, we traveled to Austin, Texas for a wedding. Jon's cousin, Megan, was the one getting married. We decided to drive instead of flying. It was considerably cheaper. We, also, decided to rent a car versus driving the truck. We ended up with a Toyota Camry. The way down took us about 23 hours total driving time. We left about 9 am on November 27th and arrived in Vinita, Oklahoma about 10 pm. We decided to stop there for the night instead of pushing towards Texas. We were afraid that there would be no hotel rooms open due to Thanksgiving. We were back on the road at about 7 am and arrived at the hotel at about 4ish pm.
That night was Thanksgiving. Megan was nice enough to cater a huge Thanksgiving dinner that was delicious. We hit the sack super early that night.
The next day was the rehearsal dinner. We decided we were sick of being cooped up and wanted to get some hiking in before the dinner. We headed about an hour outside of Austin to a park called Balcones Canyonlands National Park. We spent about 2 hours hiking the park and climbing its mountains. It was beautiful weather for it, roughly 60 degrees and sunny.
The road to the park was very hilly.
The landscape was beautiful.
The kids were very excited to see a lot of cacti.
The landscape again. There was a huge area that looks like what the grasslands of Africa looked like.
We found some ravines to splash in.
The muddy canyon walls where the water washed out the land.
One of our sunny paths.
More of the kids walking along the ravine that turned into a stream.
The super crystal clear water of the stream.
More pictures of the land we walked around in.
We made it back in time to shower and head over to the rehearsal dinner. It was a taco dinner, my fave. After the dinner, they played some games. One was a Nigerian game where the groom had to guess which woman hiding in a sheet was his wife. He didn't guess right. Then, we played a paper air plane game. Madeline's plane ended up flying the farthest. It was a little tipped towards the winner considering her Daddy, who has a degree in aeronautics, made it for her.
The next day was the wedding. The wedding wasn't till 2:30 so we headed out to find official cowboy boots and hats for pictures later. The wedding was in a beautiful venue outside Austin.
The day after we headed into San Antonio to see the Alamo and the Riverwalk. We left early that morning because Jon's phone died. We were going to try to pick up a new one before we headed down there. unfortunately, nothing was open till 12 so we had to wait.
The Alamo was awesome. We spent about 2 hours touring the place.
We met up with the rest of the family for lunch. We ate down by the Riverwalk and had an amazing steak dinner. The ribs weren't too bad either. We then toured the Riverwalk. We were not impressed. There were only a few businesses and mostly restaurants around the front of the walk. Around the back was hotels and a lot of homeless people and dead animals. At one point, we walked up street level to use the restrooms. Very scary up there and definitely not a place to be touring around night or day. We were exhausted and headed back to the car. We called everyone to see what they were going to do. They have not met up yet so we decided to head back to Austin. We still needed to get a phone and we wanted to get out of the scary neighborhoods.
First, everyone was going to met at another restaurant for dinner, then it was cancelled. So we told the kids we would go see Frozen. After talking to Jon's cousin, Andrew, he suggested a movie and dinner place. It was an awesome suggestion. We ate a very tasty meal and watched a great movie. Even Jon liked this Disney movie. It was a great way to end the vacation.
After spending many days in the sun, it was time to head home. We had a long drive ahead of use so we packed up early, ate breakfast and headed out.
A picture of Dallas on our way out of the state.
A picture of the biggest casino I have ever seen in Oklahoma. It makes the ones around here look like child's play. The route we took through Oklahoma was a very small 4 lane highway. We passed through a lot of tiny little towns. The biggest things around were the casinos. At night, nothing is opened.
There is a huge lake-reservoir that is so massive. It never seemed to end.
We stayed at Uncle Adam's and Aunt Kayla's that night. We got there around 11 pm that night. We tried to get there earlier but there was so much fog through the hills of Missouri. We were forced to drive at snail pace. After an amazing breakfast, we were on the road again.
We passed over the Mississippi River.
We got home around 7pm or so that night.
We headed straight to bed because we had to get up early the next day for school and work.
All of us, including Jon, really love Austin. It would be a place we would consider moving to one day.
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