Dallas

We stayed for a couple of days in a state park near Dallas.  The campground had a few good hikes.  One was an old farm that was built starting 1859.  Visiting places like this is unsettling to me.  I grew up in a home that was built soon after the Civil War.  The stuff we’re seeing is the stuff I saw as a kid.  While we had indoor plumbing, it was an add-on with attached rooms for the bathroom and kitchen.  Things like corn cribs, cisterns, valances, irons you heat on the stove, and old farm equipment were normal on our farm.  To see these things in a museum or outdoor display is weird.  I’m not sure if I’m getting old or it’s just the way I grew up. By the way, I don’t want a crack from anyone that I’m old enough to be in a museum!

While it’s been raining on and off this week, Texas is still in a major drought.  The drought has even pulled apart the roads in the park.  There are cracks up to a foot deep in the road!

Dallas has to be the worst city for driving.  The roads and ramps are so jammed that the GPS lady was telling us “Merge on highway.  In the next 500 feet, cross 5 lanes full of speeding traffic to exit on left.  Be ready to die.”  Maybe not quite those words, but that’s what she wanted us to do!  Anyway, we survived the drive into the city.

We visited the site where Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 (almost 48 years ago).  There is an excellent and even an emotional museum on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.  You can see the view he had along with an amazing audio tour of Kennedy’s life and era.  Outdoors, you can see a memorial, the grassy knoll, the fence behind it, and an “x” on the road where Kennedy was shot.  The picture you see is taken as we drove the same street and about where he was shot.  The window is on the end on the right side on the 2^nd from the top floor.

The thing that surprised me the most was the crowds of people.  Given that it is November, there have been very few people at most of the places we go.  Matter of fact, the last place we went we didn’t even see a ranger or caretaker.  There was a long line to buy tickets to get into this museum.  At times it was difficult to see the displays with all the people.  More people were outdoors walking around and taking pictures.  I’m not sure what it is about Dallas and President Kennedy that made this such a popular spot, but I’m glad we went.