Road Trip To Texas

This blog will take a little more of a personal turn than the last one did. Since Dallas Comic Con is a huge thing, I wanted to give that recap its own space. However, there were other parts of the trip that happened, and I wanted to give them a little bit of air time too.

We left after work on Thursday with the plan to stop halfway and stay the night somewhere. The drive was nice. We listened to Welcome to Nightvale, which is weird and random enough to be enjoyable for both of us. We also got to use our fancy new K-Tag through the tolls. Up until recently, you had to buy the K-Tag and then buy the tolls as well, but since we didn’t travel enough to actually warrant a tag, we never got one. At the Kansas Sampler Fest, they had a booth. As it so happens, K-Tags are now free! When you sign up, they take your debit information and take a monthly payment based on how many tolls you use. If you don’t use at least $10 in a month, it rolls over to the next month. Since that was definitely more our speed, we signed up.

We stopped in Oklahoma for some Braum’s (because I love Braum’s and we don’t have one here), then kept on until we found a hotel. We had no luck in Guthrie and then we almost had no luck in Edmond. I’d wanted to use some of my Wyndham points for a free night, but it didn’t happen because there were no Wyndham hotels where we stopped. Yes, I know I failed to plan, but I wasn’t entirely sure when we’d be ready to get off the road. We stopped later than I wanted to anyway, and most hotels were booked. We found one empty room at a Hampton Inn and paid way more money than we wanted for it. But now we’re Hilton rewards members, so we might be able to use that to our advantage at some point in the future.

The room was comfortable and we were back on the road earlier than we’d anticipated. In fact, the second part of our drive was a lot shorter than we’d planned for. Besides the fact that road construction wasn’t horrible, we were also driving during a low traffic time. There was only one place in Fort Worth where traffic slowed to a crawl and it didn’t last long.

Our first day was spent visiting with family, eating at local restaurants, and grabbing a couple geocaches in the area (which meant we scored our Texas souvenir…whoo!). Our second day was Dallas Comic Con and a trip to Whataburger.

We left early Sunday morning and made the long trek back to Kansas. However, we got in a couple roadside stops. In Davis, Oklahoma, we stopped at a place that makes fried pies. Think hostess snack pies, but better. I got a cherry pie and Jon got pecan. We passed another one up near Tonkawa. In hindsight, I kind of wished we’d stopped again. They were so good! We also stopped at a local diner in Blackwell, OK to have lunch. The regular fast food joints get old after awhile, and we usually find great food at good prices at the local places.

We actually made good time getting back home, but I was tired and sore for a few days after from walking around the convention and from sitting for so many hours driving. It was a blast though, and I’m glad we made it down. Road trip season has started, and this was a great way to kick things off.

A.

Dallas Comic Con 2014

The weekend before last, Jon and I took a mini road trip to Texas for Dallas Comic Con. My brother-in-law invited us a couple months ago and scored passes for us, so we couldn’t resist. The drive is a longish one…eight hours to Burleson, where we stayed with family, and then another hour to Dallas for the con. It was well worth it!

We made sure to get there early to try to avoid long lines. We didn’t avoid them entirely, but it was okay. In fact, we waited in three lines. This first line was the one to get into the ticket pick-up area. It wound around and down the convention hallway. It moved fast, though, which was nice.

I found Waldo!

The second line was just as quick. The convention staff had this down to a science. We picked up our orange bracelets (one of the staff called them “fun shackles,” and yes, we giggled like 12 year old boys) before heading down to our third line, where we ended up having to hang for awhile until they opened the exhibitor hall doors. We stood behind Batman and Catwoman, and the cosplayers were nice enough to let me take a picture.

The exhibitor hall was huge. Jon and I started by browsing the booths and taking some pictures of the vehicle models they had on the floor. The Winchesters’ Impala (from Supernatural) was the highlight of the vehicles. I made sure to get some pictures for my mom, who’s a huge fan of the show (yes..my mom is a fangirl).

Weeping Angel…don’t blink!

Sadly, I started tiring out quickly, though I don’t know if it was because I didn’t pace myself or because I didn’t sleep well the night before. The floors of the exhibitor hall were brutal, so it wasn’t long before my legs started hurting. Still, I wasn’t giving up. I stopped by a few vendors I’d wanted to see, then went down to the autograph hall.

One of my favorite movie villains of all time is Freddy Kruger. I was watching the Nightmare on Elm Street films long before I was what most parents would deem age appropriate, but none of the gore and horror struck me as a major thing when I was young. When I found out that Robert Englund and other cast members were going to be there, I was cautiously hopeful about getting to meet him.

The line wasn’t super long when I got in, but it filled up quickly. Not only did I get his autograph and get to meet him, but I also got a selfie with him as well.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that yes, I did pay for both the autograph and the selfie. While I don’t normally spend money for celebrity encounters at fan cons, for me, this was worth it. I’ve heard horror stories of celebs taking your money and giving you a quick autograph with little to no interaction, so I knew I was taking a chance. But Englund didn’t disappoint. He was very nice and we even talked for a bit about the movie and the mythos around it.

As part of the combo, I also got the autograph of Amanda Wyss who played Tina in the movie. Once again, another celebrity who was nice, who chatted, and who seemed genuinely grateful to her fans.

And as a bonus, while I was standing in line, I got to see Brent Spiner, who walked through the curtain to get to his booth and gave us all a wave and a “hello.”

I found Jon and we went and grabbed some lunch before heading to the Q&A panel with Christopher Lloyd. He talked about the Back to the Future movies and some of his other work.  

Later, we went back to the panel hall for the Nightmare on Elm Street reunion Q&A. It was interesting to hear them talk about the film and their experiences making it. As a bonus, it also got Jon interested in doing a NoES movie marathon with me…which is awesome since he doesn’t normally like horror movies.

We ended the day playing some board games. DCC had a whole area dedicated to gaming…which is one of our things…so we played a new game called Loonacy, a round of Fluxx, and two rounds of Ticket to Ride.

It was a fun day, but I crashed hard that night. There were a lot of people there. Luckily, my social anxiety stayed down for the most part. It was so worth going, and I’m hoping we can make it again next year!

A.