Lacey and Erica's vacation photo album // McKinney - Dallas - Norman // September 2022

Lacey and I have been friends for over 20 years now but we have never travelled together (that I can remember... Lacey - any thoughts on this?) As mentioned in yesterday's post, we were absolutely determined to see My Chemical Romance on their reunion tour. ❤ Since the concert was in Dallas, TX, I decided to make a little girls' trip out of it and spend 2 days away. Not only was this our first time travelling together, but it was also our first time travelling without husbands and dogs... and we had a blast! Lacey, if you're reading this, I'm proposing an annual road-trip with just the two of us!! 😄

How cute is Lacey's dog, Priscilla??! Too damn cute!!

We have crochet nights a few times each month at my house where we choose a project and work on it together. 🧶 I had no desire to drive around Dallas so my plan was to take us to a yarn shop, buy a bunch of supplies, and crochet all day at the hotel until it was time for the concert. I did a quick Google search before our trip and found the highest rated yarn shop in the area. It was McKinney Knittery in McKinney, TX. We got to Historic Downtown McKinney around lunch time. Downtown was adorable with lots of tiny boutiques and restaurants, ample parking and little to no traffic. AKA heaven!!! 😍

We had lunch at Cadillac Pizza Pub before shopping. We both got their lunch special which was a personal pizza and small salad, and we celebrated our safe arrival into Texas with cocktails (any reason to have a drink with lunch, right? 😆 LOL) The pizza was really good and my caprese salad was delicious. 

Time to shop!! McKinney Knittery is a gigantic yarn shop. Half of it is specialty yarn of all types and colors, and the other half of the store is fabric!!💓 My two favorite things!! 💓I didn't like the fabric as much as I thought I would. It was mostly traditional quilting cotton. The designs were cute but they didn't have the more modern contemporary prints that I prefer. The yarn, on the other hand, was spectacular!! I have never seen so much yarn! Of course we wanted to buy it all but, we stuck to the supplies we needed for the two projects we picked out (a skull granny square pencil pouch and a Japanese knot bag). I still ended up with five skeins and a bunch of other goodies. Funny story: we saw Moon Drake yarn at the shop. The owner of Moon Drake is an independent yarn entrepreneur in Oklahoma and former acquaintance of ours... and her yarn was highest priced in the entire shop, but I wouldn't have considered it the best colored or quality! 😆😶🙊

One thing that I despise about specialty yarn is that it always comes in hanks. It's a fancy way to display the colors of the yarn but it makes it so hard to unravel into a usable ball. The extremely friendly employees at the knittery offered to roll our yarn into balls for us with their little spinning machine. While we were waiting for them to do that, we wandered over to the next boutique, Ettiene Market. It is a handmade soap and kitchen accessories store. It smelled amazing!!

After we had our fill of shopping, we headed to the hotel. Lacey booked us a room at the Lorenzo hotel. It was the coolest place!! It is an art themed hotel with random paintings, sculptures and installation art scattered all over the place (inside and outside of the building!) The best exhibit was a small white room at the corner on the first floor. The entire room was collaged in a multitude of white objects. It was all 3-D and had color changing lights. 😎📷 Perfect photo opp!! 

The Lorenzo hotel is famous because it is where Tina Turner went when she finally had enough and left her abusive husband, Ike. They were originally staying at the Hilton, which was across the highway downtown. They got in yet another massive fight and Tina Turner said that was the last straw. She snuck out of the Hilton, ran across the highway, and took refuge at the Lorenzo (it was called something else at the time.) The hotel is very proud of its history and has Tina Turner memorabilia displayed throughout. 

I wanted to see all the little art galleries that the hotel had, so we walked around (bags in tow) for a bit before settling into our room. I also wanted to do some poolside crocheting since I saw online that the Lorenzo has one of Dallas's best pools, but it was too hot. 🌞 So we just hung out in our super chic room and crocheted only one skull (out of the 4 we need for our bag, and we didn't even start our second project... I always think I have so much more time than I really do). Then it was time to see My Chemical Romance in concert. ❤💀💓 It was SO GOOD!!! 

One of my greatest fears is the terrible traffic in/around the Dallas metro area. 🚘🚘🚘 Luckily, our drive both days wasn't too bad but I knew that traffic in the evening around the American Airlines arena would be hell. To avoid this, we got an Uber to and from the concert. I was telling Lacey how much I love Uber and how Wes & I use it on all our vacations and we've had the best experience with great drivers. Then both of the drivers Lacey and I got were awful!! 😑 To be fair, there were a lot of road closures around the arena and post-concert traffic was insane with cars & pedestrians everywhere, and no one was paying attention to what they were doing. Despite all that, we made it safely back to the hotel for a restful night's sleep.

The next morning we took one last stroll around the hotel's galleries and then headed out to breakfast. ☕ We went to the Maple Leaf Diner. It is an authentically Canadian restaurant. 🍁I have never tried Canadian food and was excited to have it. Both Lacey and I were pretty underwhelmed. We ordered poutine (which my pen pal in Canada pointed out is NOT breakfast food) and hollandaise. I've only ever had cheese curds fried so that's what I expected in the poutine. Instead, they were naked curds that were mostly melted into the bland gravy. I thought my meal was bland overall, but the Canadian bacon was tasty. We had a little time after breakfast, so we headed to Buc-ee's. I needed to get gas anyway.

We went to the Fred Jones art museum on The University of Oklahoma campus on our way home. Despite being an alumni, I haven't retuned to OU in probably 15+ years. So much has changed!! Namely the parking, as in there is none now! We had to park in the paid parking garage; their ticking booth was out of order so we had to download and attempt to use their impossible app. 😣 Anyway, Lacey used to work at the art museum but hasn't been back since she quit. It would have been nice to explore the entire museum but we were short on time and came solely for the Synesthesia exhibit. 

We wore our matching Boredwalk t-shirts!

The Synesthesia exhibit imagined how colors would be if we could use our other senses to perceive them. The aim was to answer the following - what does pink smell like, what does green sound like, what does purple feel like, etc. The exhibit was only one room but it was amazing!!! Most likely one of the hippest rooms we've been in. 😎 The room was divided into yellow, green, blue, purple and pink. Each section was interactive and we were encouraged to walk though everything while touching it.

I really liked the blue section which mimicked underwater coral. Each of the corals were sewn from a different type of fabric. 🧵 But, my favorite was one part of the pink section. It was a tall silo that was made from crochet. The outside had all sorts of crocheted flowers and doilies glued onto it. 💮🧶🌸Once you walked into it and looked up, the ceiling was a kaleidoscope and also had more crocheted items dangling down. Lacey also really liked the pink section but her favorite part of it was the mushroom. 

The silo already looks pretty rad from the outside, but then you walk in and it's this explosion of pink crochet!! I literally gasped! The lighting in the pictures isn't great so you can't really tell how joyful and vibrant the pinks are.

Since I am not an artist or a critic, I'll stop trying to describe our experience to you and just fill the remainder of this post with pictures I took at Synthesia. The Fred Jones art museum is free (parking is only $3) so if you're in the Norman area, you should totally go see this exhibit. It was a delightful end to me & Lacey's trip. I love vacationing with Wes but I had an equally fun time on my mini-vacation with Lacey. It was great to travel with someone who has 100% the same interests as I do. We didn't have to compromise since we both were excited to do the same activities and we were both shared the same vibes. Lacey, my dear, we MUST do this again!! 😀