sprignaturemoves

We planned to spend the whole day at Seaworld and that’s what we did. Everything about Seaworld was great. It exceeded my expectations.

We got there early and they let us in anyway. Since it was a weekday before spring break, it wasn’t very crowded. The weather was really nice, too. Overcast and temperatures in the 70s.

We visited the dolphin pool first thing. Rebecca was over-the-top giddy/excited. Rachel even (briefly) overcame her irrational animals-are-gross complex and touched one. (Baby steps, baby steps.)

Caleb liked the Texas Splashdown ride and the “giant octopus” (in the shark exhibit).

The Shamu show was so cool we watched it twice.

I was a little surprised that Seaworld had a lot of amusement park rides. That wasn’t what I had pictured in my mind. Everything was way better than Worlds of Fun, that’s for sure.

Anyway, here are the 200+ pictures from Seaworld.

We ate a so-so meal at TGI-Friday’s on the way back to the hotel. What is it with TGI Friday’s wait staff? Ours was completely annoying. This is our second such experience there.

Early the next morning, I started my adventure — catching the DART and making my way to Enterprise to pick up the rental car. It was less than 5 miles from the hotel as the crow flies, but according to the trip planner the trip would take 1.5 hours and have one transfer. I found out real quick that my bus route map wasn’t going to cut it. I made it to the downtown area and then missed the transfer point. The bus driver was nice enough to tell me where to catch the right bus. Without him the “quick bus ride” would have turned into several hours. Finally made it to a bus stop a 1/4 of a mile from Enterprise. Enterprise was a busy place. The guy at the front desk said I may have to wait for the size of car that I had reserved — that is unless I would take an SUV. In my mind I was thinking $$$$ in gas cost. I hesitated. He countered with “it’s a Mazda 5, our smallest SUV. It’s hardly the size of a regular SUV.” I agreed and stepped out to find a nice freshly washed Mazda 5 with a whopping 300 actual miles on it. It was real cool. Probably the newest car I’d ever driven. It was perfect.

I headed back to the hotel. We loaded up, checked out, ate a quick breakfast and headed for San Antonio.

We stopped mid-way in Waco, TX to see the Dr. Pepper Museum. It was pretty cool. We poked around the gift shop and sat down by the soda jerk and sipped a genuine Dr. Pepper made with pure cane sugar. Mmmm. Here’s some other pics.

Side note: They say “Everything is bigger in Texas.” Well, everything except for the entrance ramps on all of the highways. Maybe it’s that way in other states or maybe I just don’t get out much. Anyway, I never got used to it on the whole trip.

We finally arrived in San Antonio and checked into the Hill Country Inn & Suites that we reserved through Travelocity. I was pleasantly surprised. It was nice except for the bathroom. The toilet leaked and the shower had a reeeally slow drain.

It was then off to El Mercado in the Market Square and the Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio.

El Mercado and the Market Square was cool if you like cheap Tex-Mex trinkets (which I don’t). We did eat dinner there. That was good.

The Riverwalk was all that people said it was — and more (j/k). I thought it was really cool. From the street you wouldn’t even know it was there, but once you get down to the walk area, it’s like a whole other world of restaurants, art and cool trees. Here’s the pics we took there. And no, I still haven’t been able to figure out how to get decent pictures at night with my camera. The pictures don’t do it justice.

What a long day — an early morning for me, lots of driving, lots of walking and a late night. We all crashed pretty hard back at the hotel.

We flew out of Kansas City on a 9:00 pm Southwest flight to Dallas. Yeah, I know it was late flight. Hey, it was cheaper. The challenge with the plan was 1) we couldn’t take the DART to the motel since it was so late and 2) the hotel didn’t have shuttle service to and from the airport. There was only one other option: take a cab.

The flight in was not that great — the taking off was fine, but the descent to Dallas Love Field was a killer on everyone’s ears. Much worse than I had experienced on any other flight that I could remember.

We got off the plane trying to get our ears working again. We picked up our luggage with no problem and headed out to the pickup area. It wasn’t long before a minivan taxi pulled up. Perfect. We get in the car and tell him we want to go the Red Roof Inn. He mumbles something that I couldn’t understand and takes off. I’m glad it was late because he was all over the road. I knew where the hotel was in relation to the airport. It seemed like he didn’t even know where he was going. I quizzed him a about the location at the Red Roof Inn. He snapped at me, saying something like “You doubt?” We made it there fine. Whew.

Our room was nice except for the musty smell.

We’ve been planning this pre-Spring Break Texas vacation for a couple of months now. The plan was to fly to Dallas, rent a car, drive to San Antonio, spend a few days there, drive to Houston, spend a few days there, drive back to Dallas and then fly back to Kansas City.

Rachel worked her magic in finding us the best deals on practically everything. We researched everything and had it all planned out. The kids were super excited to say the least.

I’ve uploaded over 600 pictures to Flickr. I’ll describe what we did each day in a separate blog post and pull out a few pictures here and there.