Road Trip: Up The Middle Of The Country

Day 4: Tuesday, May 07, 2024 - Dallas, TX

Day's statistics:
Weather: 94°, overcast
Steps: Steve 11,364; Linda 11,928
Travel: 234 miles

Today's breakfast was a light continental.

Linda had a bagel.
Most self-serve waffle makers produce nice round waffles. Sometimes even square ones. But not here - it was shaped like Texas.

I had one of those, with syrup, and a yogurt.

We returned ot the room, finished packing up, brushed, checked out, and headed to our first stop in this city: the Dallas Zoo.
We headed toward town, where we also passed a few more large flags.

The GPS isn't the easiest thing to use sometimes. As we approached the zoo, it wasn't exactly clear where to enter. So we happened to drive right past it. And the GPS routed us completely around it again - primarily because it was on a oneway street.
As we approached for the second time, we slowed down, and then entered.
Our parking and entry tickets were already paid for, so after we parked under a tree - as it was in the 90s, that didn't really make that much of a difference - and headed in.

It turns out that the banner is on the side of a highway overpass, and the entry gates are underneath the [same] overpass. We didn't even notice this when we arrived, we noticed it when we were somewhere in the park and were tracking the monorail line.
We showed our ticket QR code, got a map, and headed in.
We paused near the entrance to grab a selfie too.

We entered and pretty much just went to the right throughout the entire park - except that we skipped the Children's Zoo section.

We saw a lot of animals as most of them were out and about.
There were three primary zones of the zoo: North (which was more jungle-like), Wilds of Africa, and Giants of the Savanna. We also entered a bird "cage". We tried to see the hippos, but that section was being worked on.
Unfortunately, with some of the shots, the devices focused on the enclusre rather than the animal.
Because most of the animals are recognizable, here they all are without labels.


















We entered the repitle house where finding the creature was a challenge in itself. We saw pythons, boas, cobras, monitors, iguanas, numerous snakes, frogs and toads, and more.






























































We sat down on the bench after the reptile house, and someone paid us a visit. Who says wild animals can't be tamed.

And then we continued on.














We finished in the North section, passed the Elephant Fountain, and through the tunnel to the next section Wilds of Africa.

The first enclosure had the penguins - but they just ate so they were digesting a little before swimming again.


The we continued through the rest of this zone.





















We entered the third zone and final zone, Savanna.














On the way out of the zoo, we saw this planter.

After two and a half hours, the parking lot filled, and patrons were parking in overflow lots.

After that much walking, we were hungry for a little lunch.
We had to go back toward the city to the restaurant, Original Market Diner - which was about five miles away.

We had another episode with the GPS not being able to quite keep up with the driving, and we were already on a road we needed to be on. So we went down the road a piece, did a u-turn that may or may not have been "legal", and got back on track. Not much further we were at our destination: Original Market Diner.






Linda had the Classic Mediteranean Salad with Grilled Chicken; and I had the Gyro with fries.


The portions were generous and the food was tasty and reasonably priced.

After lunch we headed into the heart - or close to it - of the city, to go to the Crow Museum of Asian Art at the University of Texas.
The street that the museum was on was closed for construction - but we saw the museum and tried to find a place to park. We found a garage and went down to the first sub level. We found the parking spot number and I scanned the QR code to download the app to pay - but there was no cell reception in the garage. Well, I tried...
We walked to the end of the block, crossed, walked a little further and entered the museum.
The museum was on the smaller side, and while it was touted as being "three floors", the third floor was more like a platform in the middle of the second. Most of the items in the museum were hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.
We once again started to the right and proceeded around. Here are the items we felt were more interesting.






We continued our tour on the second floor (rhyme not intended).















I ran up to the third floor to see if there was anything noteworthy up there - and there were some.




We were done in the first building. We passed along the walkway between the two buildings. In the coutryard below was this statue.

We were now on the second floor of the second building, and eventually made our way down to the first.











We exited the second building and headed back to the garage in the direction of the first building.
In between the two, from an angle different than the one above, was the statue and fountains.

It was about 2:00. With a three and a half hour drive, with no stops, ahead of us, we took the opportunity to head out.
Earlier in the day we discovered that the windshield washer fluid reservoir was empty (we got the car that way). We plugged the nearest Avis rental agency into the Google device and found that there was an office less than ten blocks from the museum.
As we just passed a garage entrance, we saw "Avis Rentals ←". So around the block we went. The second time we entered where we were supposed to.
The garage was shared with the Adolphus Hotel valet. When we pulled in, one of the valet's asked if we were there for Avis - I assume he knew that because typically a valet would park or get a customer's car. We were, and he knocked on the garage door since the agent usually answers. He didn't answer. The valet thought he might be with a customer, so I said I'd just go inside. But there was no one in there. Turns out he was bringing another car into the garage.
When he returned, we told him of our dilemma, and he said he'd take care of it. ten to fifteen minutes later, he returned the car, with fluid, and a complimentary washing. Yay!
We thanked him (neglected to get his name) and headed out.
I have since submitted a Feedback Form to Avis complimenting the agent.

A couple more sights as we headed out of Dallas on our way to Oklahoma City.


There was a rather complex network of bridges here in the city too.

In Gainsville, TX, less than an hour down the road, we came across what looked like new construction in the guise of what we saw in Pigeon Forge, with buildings that looked like Big Ben, the Roman Colloseum, and more.



We knew we were approaching the state line and we had our phone cameras ready. Then mile marker one, then two, three... Hmm. What's going on? We took the first exit with the expectation that it was a visitor's center.

Low and behold, on the ramp of the rest stop was in fact the state line - our first of this trip! (It's the little things that excite us.)

About ten minutes further up the road into Oklahoma, perhaps in Thanckville, we spotted a warehouse on the left side of the road. However, this warehouse, next to another similar structure, was completely missing the the back wall, and quite a bit of the contents had spilled out. We weren't sure exactly what was going on, until we saw the small housing structures across the street.


Based on what we could assess from what we saw, and the news reports around the time, we believe that we witnessed the damage from a tornado. One that looked to pass over the very road we were driving on, likely within days of when we were there. Hopefully everone survived.

Another forty-five minutes down the road in Springer, OK, we came across a wind farm - I counted twenty-six turbines.

A little before 6:00 we rolled into Oklahoma City.

This night we were staying at a Howard Johnson's. Yes, a Ho Jo. Yes, there are still some in business.

We checked in and made our way to our room (not sure what the camera focused on).

We had stopped at Walmart to pick up a fiesta salad bowl, to have along with some left over bread, cheese, and wine.

After eating, we relaxed, and played a couple hands of pinocle before going to sleep.

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