I had better get things caught up before I get too far behind :D

Our drive to Texas was fairly uneventful. The first day was the worst of it taking somewhere around 11 hours, but for the most part it was a pretty easy journey. One of those where you don't really notice how long you have been in the car until you realize it's about time to have another meal. We passed through 2 Springfields (Illinois and Missouri), saw the gateway arch while passing through St. Louis, witnessed about 100 signs for the Meramec caverns... and then later something called the fantastic caverns (which by the very nature of the wording must be a much better experience... however due to the sheer amount of signs for Meramec I feel that the 'fantastic caverns' are not being entirely truthful about their self-appointed name). Additionally we saw a slightly alarming store called 'Uranus Fudge Factory' which was given a silent pass.

We made it through a few really nasty storms which delayed our journey slightly, but still managed to stumble into the Wyndham Hotel in Oklahoma City at a reasonable hour. We were given a free upgrade to a King bed, only to walk into the room and find water dripping onto the floor from the ceiling. Yeah, yikes. As we were both exhausted from driving from Illinois, the hotel was nice enough to quickly send someone upstairs and get us into a new room without us needing to go up and down the elevators. Water issue aside (I'll give them a pass on a freak accident), we got the room at a silly low rate at a pretty nice hotel ... Priceline express deals for the win!

The next morning we took a short tour of where I used to live. I was able to spot a few things that looked familiar, but most of it was completely foreign to me. Perhaps there has been a lot of development, or perhaps my memory is just foggy after having been away for over a decade. I showed Amanda the tiny studio apartment I used to live in, as well as the old car dealership I worked at while I was in college. Pretty mundane stuff really, but it was definitely a nostalgic trip for me. Especially seeing the big field next to the dealership where we had a tornado rip through while I was at work!

We took a quick trip downtown to see the Oklahoma City National Memorial. It actually was very quick as I may have been parked illegally and wanted to make sure I didn't get a ticket. We basically ran across the street, poked our heads in just long enough for our eyes to focus on what was before us, and then rushed back to the car before a meter maid spotted it. I would have liked to go through the actual museum, unfortunately it wasn't due to open until noon that day and we had a decent drive ahead of us.

More storms on our way to Dallas, perhaps tied to hurricane Michael. It got pretty nasty in parts where the rain was coming down so hard the windshield wipers weren't able to completely keep up. We later found out that there were tornado's spotted in the area, so apparently we could have had it much worse...

We passed the worlds largest gas station... I pointed it out as we drove by from the highway and had a bit of a 'Spaceballs' type moment as the gas pumps just kept on coming. Having now looked it up I can say that it in fact has 60 gas pumps. Yes... it is super silly.

We've been in the Dallas area now for over a week. We're actually in a town called Rowlett located on a peninsula (I had to look up how to spell that just to make sure I had it right...). Its a nice drive in to Dallas going across a long bridge over water. Speaking of Dallas, we went for a drive around the city this past Sunday. I'm busy working during the week, so we pretty much are just hanging around in the airbnb we are staying at.

Our main goal was to drive around Dealey Plaza, and see the location where JFK was shot. The night before I had forced Amanda to watch some movies on the assassination so that we would have some context to things we would be seeing. Having heard that there were X's on the road to mark the locations where JFK was shot, we kept our eyes peeled. Right away I was able to spot the book depository, but after a few passes I didn't see the marks on the road. We looped around a final time, this time continuing down Elm street, and finally spotted the marks in the very lane we were driving in! We promptly exchanged an excited high-five, though given the history of the location may not have been the most appropriate response... We're heading back to see the museum next Saturday, and on Sunday we're going to head further south to San Antonio for a week.