I was so excited when I learned that there is a Meow Wolf exhibit within driving distance!!
We took our annual trip to Carrollton, TX for my birthday a few weeks ago. We sampled as many restaurants as we could, I got my stationary haul from Daiso, and we spent a day at Grapevine Mills Mall (Meow Wolf, baby!! 😍).
This post will be 90% pictures of the weird trippy Meow Wolf exhibits.
We got in a little after lunchtime and started at H-Mart. This was our first time on the Korean side of town. (We also saw a strip mall with all East Asian restaurants; that'll be bookmarked for next year's trip.) There is a food court in the grocery store so we had lots to choose from. I decided on a spicy octopus bento box from Noblu Bento Express and Wes got tofu soup from Chan. 🐙I naively thought I'd get a giant serving of stir fried octopus with my rice, but it was chopped up octopus pieces mixed in a ton of onion and kimchi. I was worried at first since I don't really like kimchi (but there was still a generous helping of octopus), and it ended up being really good (I realized that I do like cooked kimchi). We each got portions of banchan with our meals; Wes said the kimchi from my restaurant had more garlic and tasted better than the portion from his restaurant. I don't really like the side dishes so he got all of mine.
After a quick rest at the hotel, we headed to Carrollton Town Center for some shopping. It was probably 8pm or later, and the shopping center was hoppin'! I was surprised at how busy all the stores are, I think I notice this every year and still cannot get over how all these people have the energy to be out and about after working all day (I do absolutely nothing on weeknights because I'm a tired old lady👵). Wes always likes to look in the Kinikuniya bookstore. It was completely remodeled from when we came last year. It barely had any books left in it! It's mostly collectables and anime merch now. They've also reduced their tokidoki section😒 still got a super cute Unicorno, though.
We got the turnip cakes as our appetizer and while they were tasty, I have to say that the ones my mom makes are better.
We went to Thai Noodle Wave for dinner. The food was average ... neither good nor bad (Wes agreed with my assessment). I got their monthly special, which was a chicken noodle stir fry dish. 🐓It was 95% chicken and 5% noodles; I would have preferred much more noodles. The most notable feature of the restaurant is that they had a Justin Bieber playlist going all night with selections from his entire body of work.
We stopped in 7 Leaves to get some drinks for dessert and headed back to the hotel. I got a mung bean milk tea. It was good but had a lot more mung bean than I was expecting. And thus concludes day 1. Wes said his tofu soup we had for lunch was his favorite meal and I liked my ice cream best.
Day 2 is literally an entire day at the Meow Wolf exhibit. We had tickets for 1:20pm but got an early start (I was very excited) so we hung out at the arcade at Grapevine Mills mall to pass the time. Wes got to play some games that we don't have here - Marvel v. Capcom 2 - and I "learned" traditional Japanese taiko. 🥁 (I actually didn't score that high but all the instructions were in Japanese so I had no idea how to play.😅)
Before I forget, we had breakfast at Paris Baguette. I felt a tinge of regret abandoning 85℃ Bakery Café, but we go there every year so I wanted to try something new. Luckily, our pastries from Paris Baguette were really good (if they weren't, I would have insisted we return to 85℃ for second breakfast. 😂LOL). I liked my savory one better than my peppermint mochi donut, and Wes preferred his twist to the cherry Danish.
Alright, back to the mall. We played arcade games and walked around some, but still had about an hour to kill. #bored I ended up calling Meow Wolf and got our ticket time changed from 1:20pm to 12:40pm. (Their booking service is top notch, by the way 👍)
Now for Meow Wolf - when we presented our tickets, our "portal guide," Moon🌜 told us about the strange happenings in the house. The story centered around a pre-teen, Jared. One of his relatives (an uncle, I think) got admitted into the hospital for a bad cough. Jared has an imaginary pet flying axolotl named Happy Gary. Happy Gary told him about a place called the Real Unreal where he can find a cure. Jared wrote a get well card for his uncle telling him not to worry because he'll be back soon with the cure. Then he ran away from home... supposedly.
Our job was to investigate the house (touching and opening everything, Moon said) and search for Jared. 🏡We enter the house and look for clues. Jared's notes and drawings are strewn about, and there are various laptops and phone/tablets with short video clues. Wes was much more invested in solving this mystery than I was. I was curious, but mostly wanted to experience the art. Because of this, I lead us astray and we didn't really get to fully explore the house. (and thus missing a lot of clues)
There is a giant refrigerator in the kitchen. Once you open it, it leads to a hallway into the portal aka the art exhibit. 👽I was super pumped to find this and took us inside. We hadn't finished looking through the house, yet, and I kind of took us through the exhibit backwards. There are a ton of different places to explore in the Real Unreal universe. There is a two story garden🌿🌸, a neon room with a stage, an arcade👾, and tons of twisty hallways that lead into other rooms. My favorite room was a vintage looking one with lots of severed hands and heads. Wes liked the goopy black slime monster statue.
My favorite room.
Wes's favorite and my second favorite character.
After walking through the Real Unreal and not finding out what happened to Jared (I honestly kind of forgot about his disappearance), Wes reminded me that there is an entire section of the house that we didn't even walk through. 🏠So we went back through the second story of the house in search of more clues. The "correct" way to enter the Real Unreal is through the bathroom. There is a weird monster sitting on the toilet and once you walk through the bathroom, you're in the neon art exhibit.
Some people were wearing black light glasses. I didn't know how or where to purchase them or else I would have gotten us each a pair. I asked a guy what they're for and he leant me his for this neon garden. It just enhanced the colors. Wes thinks that there were secret black light clues we missed.
We walked through the ENTIRE house & every single one of it's portals probably 3 or 4 times and were none the wiser about Jared's whereabouts. 😕We found out that time somehow stopped at 7:06pm, Jared walked by the toilet sitting slime monster and his house turned into a psychedelic neon art installation. Tickets were pretty pricy so if there was an end goal, I didn't want to miss it. However, if there is no answer, I can suspend belief and accept that Jared is just enjoying life in another realm... but Wes really wanted to solve it. In the end, we decided that its not meant to be solved and no one knows what happened to Jared or his sick uncle. I went home, did some Googling, and found out that all the Meow Wolfs are connected. They're each a portal to each other so Jared can be anywhere.
We wanted to do some Christmas shopping when we were roaming the mall before our ticket time, but I know that Meow Wolf has a no bag policy and I didn't want to leave our stuff in the car. So, we walked around the humungous circular mall another 2 or 3 times trying to remember which stores we wanted to get stuff from. 🛍We decided we needed a snack after all that walking so I got some sour cream & onion curly fries from the Potato Corner. (Wes just got Taco Bell.)
A place that only serves fries!! 🍟😋
We were also thirsty after all that walking so we grabbed some drinks on our way back to the hotel and then I sat my ass down. 😫I think that is the most walking I've done in a while. LOL I got a lychee coconut water with rose from Coconut Paradise. Funny story (okay, not "haha funny" but "humanity sucks" funny)- The man in the picture in the top left walked up to the counter, asked for a free sample, ate it and walked away without a reaction or thank you. The guy working the counter looked so sad & dejected. Wes got a coffee from 85℃ Bakery Café since we missed it in the morning.
We went to Mad for Chicken for dinner. It served hot, fresh, twice fried Korean chicken wings. 🍗They were SO GOOD, my favorite meal of this trip. We got complimentary chili dusted popcorn, and ordered some dumplings for our appetizer. We got a mix of spicy and regular ones. They were both good. Everything was made-to-order so it came out piping hot. 🔥They had sports & popular tv shows on, but one of the tv's had random trivia about anime, country flags, and movie titles spelled out with emojis. I did terribly but it was still fun to play along.
The next morning, we got breakfast at 99 Ranch and did our grocery shopping before heading back to Oklahoma. They have the best black preserved egg congee and I can't have a birthday Carrollton trip without it. 🍚One of Wes's coworkers requested strawberry Choco-pies so we grabbed some for him one our way out (they didn't have the Choco-pie brand but we got a comparable substitute).
What I would give to swim in those vats of congee!
We stopped in Buc-ee's for some more groceries and Christmas shopping on our way out of Texas. Nothing too exciting except for that I saw Santa Buc-ee! 🎅
Ironically, I didn't take any pictures of the stuff we got at Buc-ee's. But look at the awesomeness I got from Daiso, Teso, and random other shops!!
And now I am 39 years old. The first few times we took my birthday trip, we just ate and stayed one night. Then we started staying a few days and adding other activities into the mix. Last year we went fabric shopping, and the year before that we went to Rainbow Vomit. It is a similar installation art exhibit where you wander around a building looking for clues. Rainbow Vomit had more unique art and the puzzle was actually solvable (I got a magnet for my prize!) so we both liked it better. I did still really also enjoy Meow Wolf. Now to plan for 2024... what adventures will we have?
Last view from Meow Wolf gardens.
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