Houston 2013: Road-trip Recap

We knew that we wanted to take a fun family vacation this year, but we weren't exactly sure where we wanted to go. We considered pretty much every state in the continental US (except Florida... as we've already been there) at some point or another. In the end we took a rather "close your eyes and put your finger on a map" approach. We found out about the Houston City Pass, and that pushed us over the edge. We've always wanted to go to Texas together and we figured "Why not now?" We found some fun things to to, spent hours looking through hotel reviews, and then packed up and started our road trip adventure!

Lydia is still taking 2 naps a day - so we timed our driving for frequent stops when she was awake and to push through when she was sleeping. The first day we got away a little late (Like... 2 1/2 hours later than we had planned), and didn't get to our Hotel in Gallup, NM until after one in the a.m. We tried to put her down in her bed but she was w.i.r.e.d. Seriously bouncing off the walls. David went to sleep because someone had to be the designated driver the next day and I sat up while Lydia ran around the room looking in every crack and corner, playing in our bags, and babbling to herself while she crawled through the barricade that I made and played in the closet right by David's head. I worked on some last minute wedding announcement changes for a client, and reworked a whole set of Thank You cards for another.  Finally I had had it. Around 4:30, Lydia went down into her bed and luckily went to sleep after crying for a couple of very long minutes. If she hadn't have gone to bed when she did - the next morning we were going to turn around and go right back home. 

Thankfully, that was the most dramatic part of the whole trip! Lydia did great in the car, she loved playing in all of the different hotels, and she slept great. We did a lot of googling "Free things to do in ________" as we were driving and stopped at lots of fun things along the way. Three days out, five days there, three days home. It was awesome. 

Here are some highlights:

Monticello LDS Temple

(Our first night we stopped for dinner at the Monticello Temple. We parked in a church parking lot and made sandwiches on the back of the car. It was perfect.)

Old Town Albuquerque, NM 

(We loved walking around the Old Town, looking in the shops, snacking on some melon, and enjoying our lunch in the big grassy area across from this beautiful church. Honestly, this is one of my favorite stops of our whole trip.)

Harrington House - Amarillo, TX

(We stopped at this beautiful mansion as we were passing through, and even though their tour hours were over - we ate dinner on the lawn and played with Lydia's pink ball before changing her into her pajamas for our night stretch of driving.) 

Lots of fun Hotel stays

 (Our lives got a whole lot better once we realized that Lydia needed about an hour to run around the hotel before we put her down for bed. After the first night we made sure that we got to our hotel with plenty of time to wind down before bed.) 

The Houston Zoo

 (We loved looking at all of the animals, letting Lydia play with the stuffed animals in the gift shops,  and mostly taking lots of pictures of Lydia. It was a nice overcast day - and even rained a nice warm rain on us to keep us cool.)

The Houston LDS Temple

(On Sunday afternoon after attending a ward close to our hotel, we made the drive to the Houston Temple. It was beautiful. We enjoyed walking around and feeling right at home. We both wish that we could have made it work to switch off watching Lydia while the other one was able to attend a session/do initiatory, but it never worked out. We are so glad that we were able to go walk around the grounds though.)

Houston Children's Museum

(Although this was a little advanced for Lydia, we still had a fun time walking around and playing with things here and there. )

 

 Houston Aquarium

(I will be honest. I was REALLY excited for the aquarium. It was a bit of the letdown. It was not super large - so small in fact that when we got to the end we walked ourselves back to the beginning and went through again because it had taken so little time. And our favorite exhibit at the aquarium was the White Bengal Tiger - don't ask me why he was there... but he was. Ooh.. And the stingrays. Lydia even touched one of them, but after it tried to eat her finger she wanted nothing to do with them in close quarters. We enjoyed ourselves though.)

 

NASA Space Center: Houston

(This is one of the main reasons that we decided on Houston. Such a neat place. One of our very favorite parts were learning all about and being able to see the Historic Command Center, where their entire computing power was less than 1/6 of the storage space for the pictures in this post and where they were able to put a man on the moon. We also loved seeing the actual training facility for the astronauts that are preparing for missions right now.)

Galveston, TX and the Beach

(This was hands-down Lydia's favorite part of the trip. She l.o.v.e.d the beach. She loved the waves and the water and the sand and the rocks. She was fearless and loved barreling into the ocean as far as we'd let her go before dragging her back. We also loved taking a ferry ride to a nearby island and checking out all the tourist shops along The Strand.)

Bureau of Engraving and Printing - Forth Worth, TX

(We randomly found this free public tour as we were heading out of Houston to head home. We altered our route a bit to go through Fort Worth and made it just in time for their last tour of the day. SO glad that we did! We loved seeing how all the US currency is printed, and we were even able to touch the engraved plates that they use for printing. We were so enthralled, they had to ask us to leave the self-guided tour because we had lost track of time. Definitely a highlight of the trip. Camera's weren't allowed inside but as we were driving out we stopped by the sign at the entrance and took turns snapping a picture of each other. Then through some photoshop magic I combined them to come up with this pretty fellow. Or maybe I should have just said that Lydia took the picture.) 

Blue Hole - Santa Rosa, NM

(Another random stop along our road trip home. We saw the signs on I-40 and decided to check it out. Our ipad couldn't tell us much about it, but we followed the roadside arrows and found it surprisingly easily. So glad we stopped! A natural spring from an aquifer that you can dive and swim in. It was fun and beautiful and SO cold.)

Monticello Days - Monticello, UT

(We aren't exactly sure what it was called, but as we drove through Monticello on our way home - we saw a fun extravaganza going on and decided to stop and play. We walked around the booths, played with Lydia's ball, and played on the playground. A perfect stop with only 5 1/2 hours left to drive!)

It was a FANTASTIC Vacation. We took over 1,200 photos. I really tried to just pick some of my favorite pictures to include in this post. I'm probably going to go through and blog more in depth about each place - but this recap is a great overview for the people that read our blog. We would definitely recommend Houston as a vacation destination. It was everything that we wanted. Full of fun, reading books, walking around, playing in the sun, museums, the beach, and just being together! We're so grateful that we were able to go and that there were so many free things to do and especially that Lydia was such a trooper in the car. Now I can't believe that it is August and summer is almost over. We are definitely planning to make the most of the little bit of summertime we have left.