First off, I should note a couple of things. 1. The night I arrived in Dallas, I got to meet my friend Kelly for the first time in 10+ years of virtual friendship! She took me to Strangeways, a Smiths-themed bar! I love her. Shoutout to LiveJournal for introducing us in the early 2000s. 2. After my conference was over on Friday afternoon, Nat came to join me! I neglected to mention that, just jumped right in to talking about pet cemeteries. (As soon as he got to the hotel where I’d been staying, we went to the In-N-Out across the street. I can now confirm that there is nothing delicious about In-N-Out if you don’t eat meat 😔)

After Toothacres on Saturday morning, we drove to Fair Park in attempt to see the old Dallas Museum of Natural History there. I had read about it months before my trip and learned that, since the main/big museum is now the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, the Fair Park location was only open on Saturdays. A few days before I left, I checked their website and saw that due to “building maintenance,” the Fair Park location was closed to the public. We thought we’d still go to check out the exterior, and maybe try to find someone to let us in? But to no avail. While we were there they were setting up for “Holiday Wonder,” so there were these super-realistic inflatable animals all over the place. Kinda neat, not nearly as neat as historic dioramas/taxidermy.

We were walking around Fair Park, which is a lovely place (so much of it is empty/unused and looks abandoned!), and went into the Children’s Aquarium to see if we could talk to someone. Nobody knew anything about the natural history museum, but they did tell us that the Texas Discovery Gardens, a butterfly garden, was super cool. So we went there and it was… not great? Not a lot of butterflies (I love the Butterfly Pavilion in Denver). We also went to see a zoo-themed McDonald’s I had learned about from Roadside America, then went to check in to our swanky fitness retreat hotel (yep). Next: you guessed it – more pet cemeteries!