Spring Break 2025 - Day 7 Secret Food Tour

We spent 3.5 hours on a Secret Food Tour of the Deep Ellum neighborhood in Dallas. We had a great guide, Isaac, who told us a lot about the history of the buildings and business in the area. We were well fed by the end of the tour: brisket, spice shop (taste testing different oils, spices, popcorn, and balsamic vinegars), frito pie, we walked into a cheese place and a meat market, wagyu beef tacos, candy shop, and wrapped it up with a slice of pie. Of course, we were playing the card game again today. The tour guide and one of the other people on the tour joined in our game.

We began our tour at Pecan Lodge. The owners started out as a food stall at Dallas' Food Market. Texas Monthly calls Pecan Lodge one of the top four barbecue joints in the world.

The brisket was juicy, flavorful, and delicious. D said it was the best thing she had on the food tour.

After we ate, the tour guide Issac led us around back to see the restaurants smokers. They use mesquite and oak for their briskets. It smelled amazing in the smoker shed.

Our next stop was 1890 Marketplace. This store had olive oil infused with different flavors, flavored balsamic vinegars, specialty gourmet foods, chef tools, spices, and skin care. We tried many types of olive oils and balsamic vinegars. Boogs liked the flavored popcorn. I brought garlic infused olive oil and ghost pepper honey. Both were delicious! Boogs liked the raspberry dark balsamic vinegar, but not enough to purchase it.

Isaac then led us on a tour of the murals in Deep Ellum. This mural showed what Deep Ellum looked like in the 1930s.

Blues Alley had some beautiful murals. This mural show Erykah Badu by Dan Colcer. The portrait is made up of smaller scenes. For instance, one of the eyes is a DJ spinnning a record and the other eye's eyelid is the thumb on a hand. 

Next, we stopped in at the Angry Dog for Frito Pie. It was really tasty and brought back childhood memories of eating Frito Pie in the 1970s. Of course we were still playing the secret phrase card game (Stick It In) during the food tour. While we were eating the Frito pie, I told Isaac about the game. We gave him some cards and he joined in, too. By the end of the tour, he was able to sneak in "macarena" without getting caught.

We walked into Rudolph's Market & Sausage Factory for beef jerky. Unfortunately, they did not have any at that time. This store has been in the same location since 1895.

We were told that those butcher blocks are the same ones that have been in use since 1895. They are curved in the middle from being used and sanded down. It was neat to learn a bit about the history of the shop.

Revolver Taco Lounge is an award winning restaurant. Boogs, J4, and I thought the tacos were the best things we ate on our food tour.

It had a nice outdoor seating area. It was very small inside the restaurant. 

We were served the Carne Asada Taco. It was made with marinated, grilled  wagyu beef. It was so tender. The salsa and cilantro rounded it out perfectly. I picked off all of the raw onions.

Next stop on our food tour was Rocket Fizz Candy Shop. The guide had us each choose a flavored soda. I had a marshmallow flavored one, Boogs had Honeydew, J4 had cherry limeade, and D had a boring root beer. Of course we also bought candy and junk food while we were there.

Our last stop on the food tour was at Emporium Pies. We were pretty full by the last stop. Boogs and I split a piece of the Nannerz pie. It tasted like really good banana pudding with a flaky crust. It was also drizzled with a maple caramel sauce. Soooooo good.

We practically rolled back to our Airbnb after the food tour. Our guide did an excellent job of including historical information about the businesses, buildings, and culture of the area. 

We headed home the next morning. I am so glad the boys agreed to travel with us for Spring Break. As the boys get older, we know time is limited for us to be able to continue these trips together.

As always, D, here are a few phrases for the trip (I did not write down very many during this trip):

What would S do?  = Hwaugh (vomit noises)

No badminton today, the wind is blowing in 5 directions.

Cemetery stop

Slip it in cards - one ply toilet paper, aisle of shame

Don't interrupt - S dealing cards

Spring Break 2025 Day 5 & 6 Meow Wolf and Ghost Tour

Day 5 - Leaving Broken Bow, Oklahoma. 

When the boys agreed to come on the trip, they told us that we were not allowed to stop at any cemeteries. D and I like to find the oldest graves in cemeteries and read the tombstones. Today, the boys were following in the car behind us. We were passing a cemetery and D pulled in real quick. The boys followed us and said that we needed to keep driving. J2 drove toward the exit and waited by the gate revving his engine until we left. They don’t like to stop for historical markers either.

When we got to Dallas we had lunch at Pappasito's. Then J2 headed back home to Aquilla because he had to work the next day. We then headed to our next Airbnb but were told we had to wait past our check in time to check in. The description said it slept 6 - two queen beds, a sofa, and a blowup mattress. 

It was cute but a tight squeeze. There was too much furniture in such a small place. The sofa was not long enough for any of us to lay down. We had to push the furniture over to one wall to make enough room to put the air mattress. It was missing several things from its description - towels, plates, glasses, sheets, and the air mattress had a hole in it. The host was very responsive. They told us they had very bad guests right before us who had made a mess and destroyed some things in the apartment. They purchased and had towels, plates, glasses, sheets, and a new air mattress delivered by the next morning. The second sleeping area was separated by a curtain that hung off of the ground by 2.5 feet, not private at all.

The balcony had a great view of a beautiful sunset. We spent the evening playing card games.

Day 6 - We started our day by going to Meow Wolf in Grapevine. Mixed feelings about this. Some areas were cool but others were just weird to be weird. It was a great backdrop for taking pictures but it was super crowded because of Spring Break. We were unable to work on solving the mystery of Meow Wolf because of the huge crowds. You could barely walk through some areas, especially inside the house. The boys were not enjoying it very much so we did not stay long.

The outside of the house and garden area really looked like it was night time.

Inside the house, there were many cool passageways. The refrigerators were my favorite passageways.

This area had 6 different refrigerator doors.

The ceiling decoration was made of cut paper.

We left Meow Wolf, had lunch, and then hung out at the apartment until it was time for the Dallas Terrors Ghost Tour.

We met at the Ferris Plaza and Park at sunset. I brought a card game on the trip called Slip It In. You have to sneakily say the phrase on the card without getting caught. (A couple of months ago, I removed all of the not-appropriate-for-the-middle-schooler cards.) We each took five cards on the three hour ghost tour. It was a fun game but it did make you suspicious of every word spoken by any of the card holders. Boog’s cards are not pictured here. He managed to work “one-ply toilet paper” into the conversation without getting caught.

These cards were not attempted. They were too hard to easily work into natural conversations.

The cards below were used unsuccessfully. They were easily caught.

These are the cards that were worked into conversation without getting caught.

We paid the extra fee to get a couple of EMF tools to detect ghosts. Boogs was showing how it was really lighting up at the starting point of our ghost tour. 

The guide told us three creepy stories about the Holiday Inn Express building - murder, mystery, supernatural occurrences.

The guide told us to take a picture of the castle and then carefully zoom in on the picture. I don’t see any ghosts or orbs in it. The guide was a true believer in ghosts so I think he was more inclined to credit things to ghosts and supernatural occurrences.

Daphne wandered away from the tour to check out a creepy looking hole at the base of the building.

The castle had a museum in it that closed down in 2023. The guide said there are always ghosts moving around in this building. In the video D took, it looked like a mist crossed from one side of the room to the other side.

Replica of a log cabin. The guide had us take video through the crack in the door to capture orbs inside. D swears she caught movement in her video. I think it looked like dust floating in the light of her camera.

The street where President Kennedy's car was when he was shot.

The grassy knoll where the shot that killed President Kennedy came from.

In 2016, a man killed 5 people and wounded 21 in front of this building.

We were the only ones that paid for the extended tour. We wandered around for more than an hour after dark. This is the inside of an above ground grave at the cemetery. The occupants were moved after the structure cracked apart for the third time.

Dallas Cattle Drive Sculpture. It looked really cool in the dark.

It was a fun tour. We were luck to have such a great guide.

Spring Break 2025 - Day 3 & 4 Hiking & Ziplining

We decided to go for a hike on a different trail in the Ouchita National Forest. D was not up for the hike, so I went with the boys. 

It was an absolutely beautiful day for a hike. The Friends Trail was pretty steep in certain places. The boys easily got ahead of me. I had to ask them to wait up several times. Getting older with bad knees is not fun.

We lucked out, the trail was not very busy even though the parking lot was packed.

My shirt says, "Please be patient with me, I'm from the 1900s." The boys were patient.

Quite a bit of the trail was along the river. It was beautiful. There were a couple of spots with rapids.

We had a great time exploring the area.

After we finished the trail, we decided to walk to an area that would be easier for D to pick us up. I really liked the fishing walkways that were next to the road. They protected people fishing from the road traffic.

We waited at the Beaver's Bend Land and Water park for D to pick us up. It was a busy area. There were people on kayaks, canoes, paddle boats, and stand up paddle boards. The boys did not want to get out on the water.

We went back to the Airbnb house for the rest of the day. D and I worked on the puzzle.

We used the table for a few rounds of ping pong. Played some card games and soaked in the hot tub.

After dinner, the boyes started a fire for s'mores.

It took awhile but it eventually turned into a really nice fire.

The s'mores were delicious and we enjoyed sitting around the fire telling stories.

Day 4 - we decided to go zip lining at Rugaru Adventures. D did not join us because of her old lady hip.

The boys grudgingly posed for pictures. Burt let me know they were not thrilled by the excessive amount of pictures I took.

On the last zipline, the Yowie, guests were invited to enter a Yowie yelling contest. The guest who yelled the loudest and longest would win a t-shirt from the gift shop. The boys were "too cool" to participate. I told them I was definitely going to win. There were 10 other people on the zipline tour with us.

Guess what... I won the contest and a shirt!!!

When we got back to the house, the boys got a nice fire going and we roasted hot dogs over the campfire for dinner. 

It was a nice way to end our time in Broken Bow. We really enjoyed the house, hiking, campfires, and downtime.