paulg

Never thought you'd see a trip report about Glen Rose, TX, did you? Well I never thought I'd write one. But since I have recently taken a liking to writing trip reports for our bigger trips, I thought I'd give it a shot for a smaller one and give you all something new to read. After all, who wants to read about Switzerland or New Zealand for the umpteenth time?

Our family of four (myself, wife, 16 yo daughter, 11 yo son) headed to Glen Rose, TX, just SW of Fort Worth, for Labor Day weekend since our beach trip to Port Aransas had been compromised by Harvey. We had been to Glen Rose before for camping and checking out the dinosaur tracks, so we knew what it had to offer. I'm also a firm believer that you can find something of interest almost anywhere, and it doesn't need to [always] be big and famous to be of interest.

So Saturday morning we loaded up the Outback and drove the 2.5 hours from Austin to Glen Rose. We stopped for lunch along the way in Lampasas, but otherwise headed straight up to our La Quinta on the edge of town. We checked in and hung out in the indoor pool and hot tub for a bit. My wife and I really hate indoor pools due to the humidity and trapped-in chlorine fog, but it was an easy way to kill some time and let the kids have some fun.

We had plans to go to a drive-in movie 20 min north in Granbury that evening, so after the pool and showering, we made the drive up to Granbury and parked in downtown where a festival was just winding down. Had we know ahead of time about the festival, we would have skipped the pool and driven straight up there. Oh well. Anyway, we grabbed dinner at Linda's Southern Kitchen, which served decent comfort food like chicken fried steak, fried pork chops, burgers, etc. My daughter first remarked "this is an old people restaurant," to which I replied "it's more just a small town restaurant." Nothing like a good Small Town, USA experience to educate the kids.

After dinner we drove to the Brazos Drive-In Theater, where we waited in line about 30 min to get in (we got their intentionally early to get a good spot up front). The mosquitos were out in FULL force that evening, so we all started coating ourselves in copious amounts of all kinds of repellants ... the cocktail worked for the most part. It was a double-feature of The Nut Job 2 and Despicable Me 3. The Nut Job was a bit of a stupid movie, but the atmosphere made it enjoyable. DM3 was the better of the two movies, but the kids both fell asleep before it ended as it was getting close to 11:30.

We got back to the La Quinta around midnight and hit the beds. The next morning was a late one, but we got to the free breakfast in time before they shut down at 9:30am. After that we headed to the Fossil Rim Nature Center, which is a 1400 acre drive-though safari, with a variety of exotic animals. While it is mostly comprised of antelope, deer, and the like, they do have ostriches, giraffes, rhinos, cheetah, zebra, etc. It's pricey (~ $100 for the four of us) but good fun for the kids as the friendlier animals have no problem sticking their heads in the car and showing you their tongues.

After that we grabbed lunch in downtown Glen Rose at an Italian restaurant, which was a bit of a hole but served decent pizza. It was also housed in the smallest ex-Coke bottling facility in the U.S. The soda fountain and pie shop (Pie Peddlers) next store required us to save room for some ice cream, shakes, and buttermilk pie. I won't say I was overly impressed by the pie, but I usually like just about any dessert.

Next was a trip to the Dinosaur Valley State Park, where there are extremely well preserved therapod and sauropod tracks fossilized in the muddy banks of the Paluxy River. The size and quality of the prints is quite amazing. Some are roped off, but at the Ballroom site you can readily walk and swim amongst the tracks (mostly 3-toed therapods here), though the stone river bed is extremely slippery here. Some of the tracks were removed and can be found in the American Museum of Natural History in NY and the Texas Memorial Museum at UT-Austin. After viewing the tracks, we spent a couple hours cooling off by swimming in the blue hole (more of a brown hole) and had a great time.

That was already a long day, so we grabbed Burger King (yes, we don't eat the healthiest on these types of short road trips) and took it back to the hotel for dinner. The next day, Labor Day, we took our time getting ready to leave and had the complimentary breakfast once again. Then we headed back up the road for Big Rocks Park. This is a park just past the small downtown area on the Paluxy River with a lot of huge rounded boulders, fun for climbing over and through. The water level was very low, but still flowing enough to go wading and minnow catching. My son has become an expert minnow catcher over the years (we travel with nets and containers in the car in anticipation) and got a collection of 25-30 before we had to leave and release them for the next kids to catch.

Leaving Big Rocks marked the end of our trip, so we got back on the road for Austin before noon and stopped off for lunch again in Lampasas. All in all it was a fun little family road trip to Small Town, TX, USA ... though it wasn't the beach.

4sammy

Sounds like fun! I had to laugh too. As a Dallas-ite that has been to Glen Rose ... we don't typically think to document these shorter trips. We should though because there isn't always time and money for the big ones. And you know - I bet the kids will remember these types of trips a lot more than we expect .

paulg

4sammy, anytime I can get away from work and home with the family, it's a fun time. And there is some truth to your last statement. We are a reflection of all of our experiences, whether large or small. As an American, there is so much to experience and enjoy in our own cities, states, and countries, so we try to get out as often as possible.

emalloy

paulg, I must admit that I had to pull up google maps to find out where Glen Rose is, but I really enjoyed the TR. I'm glad you took the kids to the drive in, we only have one part time in the summer here. I remember getting into pajamas and bringing a ton of home made popcorn and falling asleep before the show was over.

Thanks for the report.

paulg

emalloy, yes, I don't expect anyone from outside of Central-North Texas to know where it is. And yes, the Drive-In has many great memories. As an 8 year old my parents took me to a double feature of Love at First Bite and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1979) ... wait, that might not be the best example.

I left out the part about how we got a front row spot, my son and I played catch amongst all of the kids running around on the lawn in front of the screen, and the kids laid in the back of the Outback while my wife and I enjoyed the shows from camp chairs. And it was only $20 for the entire family!