It was a long road to get to Texas, as I detail here, but once I was back in my home state, it felt great to finally be there. Since I was so delayed in getting down there, due to the volcano in Alaska, I only had a few days to see everyone. I got in early Sunday morning into Dallas/Ft. Worth (12:30 a.m.), and Laura was scheduled to leave on Tuesday, while I would try to go home Thursday morning.
That Sunday night, my sister Katie and her husband Scott treated my parents and Laura and me to a great dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. With fillet steak, sauteed spinach with garlic (Hong Kong style!), crab cakes, and cheesecake dessert, it was nothing short of a heavenly experience. Since the meal was so expensive, it was needless to say that Laura and I would not be eating like this for a long time, so we savored every bite.
After dinner, my parents along with Laura and I, drove the two hours back to Tyler to spend a few days there. On Monday, we got to see my mom’s new office where she works, and plenty of amazing Azaleas. Tyler is famous for its Azaleas in the spring, and there is an entire district where yards are shown off to the public. That night for dinner, we ate at El Chico, a local favorite of my family. I don’t get to enjoy good Tex-Mex in Ohio, so I eat it any chance I can while I’m back home.
The next day, we all headed back to Dallas/Ft. Worth, because Laura needed to head home. This vacation ended up being quite the blurry whirlwind, as it was rush-rush-rush. Sweet Pea headed back to Ohio that night on her American Airlines flight, and I stayed with Scott and Katie and watched movies in their new home theater. That was awesome and now I need to figure out how to pay to have one for myself! Click on Laura’s picture above to see some photos of our time in Tyler.
The next morning, on Wednesday, I borrowed my sister’s car and headed the 45 minute drive down to Arlington, to see my grandparents. I took them to breakfast at their usual breakfast place, and then we headed over to Ft. Worth, to see where my grandpa used to work at his old business he used to own. Air-Rite air conditioning was started by my grandpa in 1955 and serviced many homes in the Ft. Worth area, just as A/C was getting started. He has since sold the business and is long retired (he’ll be 91 in May) but the business is still there, pleasing customers and keeping them cool in the hot Texas summers. We drove the old route to the address, the same route he used to take years ago. So much has changed, he said, but there are still many things that are the same.
We passed the college that he graduated from, and drove past the now vacant lot that used to hold the house he grew up in. We drove past Paris Coffee shop, a place as famous and with as much heritage as Ft. Worth itself. Even people like G.W. Bush have dined there, and its food is a good as you can get in the city. Papaw ate there off and on for years as his Air-Rite business was just a block down the road.
We got to see where my great grandparents lived and a lake that is named after my great grandfather, Pappy Elkins, my grandmothers father. Pappy Elkins lake is in a park that is near where he used to live. He was there often, and when he passed away, the city of Dalworthington Gardens named the lake after him.
We capped off our afternoon with the mandatory visit to my favorite Tex-Mex place, Cafe Pulido’s. Nothing beats it! Every time I’m in Texas, I have to get at least a lunch there at Pulido’s. After that, I headed back to my sister’s house, near DFW airport, so I could catch a ride back to Ohio the next morning. You can click on my grandparent’s picture to see more photos of them showing me around.
I was lucky to catch the 8:45 flight from DFW to Charlotte, as an earlier flight had cancelled and all the seats were now oversold. I was traveling standby (of course — par for the course on this so-called vacation) and it looked doubtful that I would get a seat. As chance would have it, many people who were on the cancelled flight didn’t show up and God was good enough to give me one of the last seats on the flight! Once arriving in Charlotte, the next flight to Columbus was 3 hours away because I had missed the last flight by 15 minutes. Bummer — but there is free wifi there, and rocking chairs line the main terminal. If you’ve ever been to Charlotte, that long row of rocking chairs is a signature part of that airport.
As the time approached for my flight, the gate agent let me know that this flight was also oversold. However, the chances of getting a seat on this flight were worse that in Dallas because there were lots of employees ahead of me. Passengers don’t always show up, but employees already waiting at the gate are definitely not going to miss the flight!
The agent was kind enough to let me know that there was a flight to Dayton that was boarding right then, and it had plenty of seats available for me. My only other option was to wait for the flight that would get into Columbus at 11:30 p.m. and I didn’t want to wait that long. Dayton was only an hour’s drive from Columbus and I could be home by five o’clock, so I made a mad dash for that gate and got their just in time.
I ran up to the flight and they closed the door. I tried to get ahold of Laura, to see if she could drive over to Dayton after work and pick me up. If she couldn’t, I was just going to rent a car and drive home. After the mess that this vacation had become, I didn’t care anymore about rental cars and flights, I just wanted to do whatever I could to get home.
Luckily, when I arrived in Dayton, Laura had left a message on my phone saying she was just a half hour away. We stopped in at Dayton’s Texas Roadhouse for some steak and as a way to cap off a crazy vacation that almost wasn’t.
It was good to see my family, even if the time was too short, but next time, I want to make sure I have plenty of time to visit the old stomping grounds. Have you had a crazy vacation experience? Share your experience with me.