Wes and Erica's vacation photo album // Carrollton, TX // December 2023

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. 

We walked around H-Mart after lunch, and drooled over all of the cuts of meat used for Korean barbeque. I always want to buy so much when we come to Carrollton but it's never feasible since hotel refrigerators are tiny and we have to leave everything in the car. We went to Somisomi for dessert where I got the best ice cream.🍦😋 The fish was filled with red bean paste and sat atop my matcha soft serve, which was topped with Oreo crumbles, sprinkles and a strawberry.🍓 Wes got their house cold brew, which he said was good. 

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.

Wes and Erica's vacation photo album // Carrollton, TX // December 2022

When you're 38, you get excited about -- beef jerky case at Buc-ee's, a gorgeous quilt at Not Your Mama's Quilt Store, and gazebo at Historic Downtown Carrollton

Last week, we took my annual birthday trip to Carrollton Town Center. ☕🍙🍜🍨🍣 We ate lots of yummy Asian food and did our shopping, per usual, but new this year was the addition of fabric shopping! 😄 I found three fabric stores in the area, and Wes found an authorized Gundam model kit retailer. First, pictures of food, then shopping...

We got into town mid-afternoon so we started with a light lunch. We went to Frankseoul for Korean hotdogs. I got the "half & half dog", which was part hot dog and part mozzarella stick rolled in a crispy batter. They had a bunch of dipping sauces; I got honey garlic, hot sauce, and ketchup. For dessert, I got a dalgona ice cream sundae. 🍨 It was sooooo good!!! It was soft-serve ice cream topped with caramel and bits of dalgona cookies. The cookies were a little too sweet by themself but tasted great in the sundae. Wes got a sujeongwa drink, which is a cinnamon punch. He was so excited that they had it because he hasn't had it in ages and can't find it anywhere. 

We went to dinner at Too Thai Street Eats. It is the best Thai food I've ever had and the restaurant had a nice vibe, too. I think this is my favorite restaurant we visited this year. I got the boat noodles with beef. I asked for a 1.5 - 2 spiciness level but it was still too spicy for me to drink the broth. For our appetizer, we ordered the pork Thai sausage. I thought they were really good but Wes said they had too much ginger in them. He got the pad Thai and said it was good but didn't share my opinion of it being the best Thai restaurant. 

The next morning, we went to 99 Ranch for breakfast and groceries. There is only one place I've found in OKC that has congee with bits of preserved black eggs in it, and its only available for dim sum. 😒 Since we rarely get dim sum here, I wait literally all year to get my bowl of congee from 99 Ranch. It is always my favorite breakfast. 🥣 Wes got a pastry with all of his favorite ingredients - coconut, raisins, and almonds. We bought lots of chips, candy, and other non-perishable grocery items. My mom only uses a specific brand of egg noodles (that has 2 chickens on the packaging 🐓🐓). Cao Nguyen stopped carrying them so she's been lamenting each time we go over to her house for won tons. We found that exact brand at 99 Ranch so, of course we stocked up! LOL

For lunch, we returned to BCD Tofu House. It was my favorite restaurant when we visited for my birthday last year. I was so excited to return but was underwhelmed this time around. 🙁 It had to have been what I ordered because Wes said his meal was just as good as last year's. I got the soon tofu with tripe. I was worried it would be too spicy so I ordered it plain. It was definitely plain... too plain. It didn't have any spice in it and it tasted gamey because of the intestines. I should have stuck with seafood and a low spiciness level. 

We wanted an afternoon snack and had way too many options to choose from. There was a boba cafè, a place that made crêpes, and an ice cream shop that I was interested in. We decided on none of those. LOL We went to Coconut Paradise. I don't even like coconuts! 😅 This place was absolutely amazing. It's decor is so adorable, the owner is the nicest man ever, and the coconut jelly desserts were so good! 😋 I told the owner that I've never tried coconut jelly so he told us all about them and offered samples. I tried the matcha flavor but ended up with chocolate. The coconut jelly is like a pudding but not as thick. The one I got was topped with Oero bits, M&M's, chocolate syrup, mochi balls and coconut flakes. It didn't really even taste like coconut. Wes got the coconut espresso. He said it was good but wish he got the coconut Thai tea in hindsight. 

For dinner we went to Kura for sushi. It is a sushi train restaurant. The wait was super long and the food was just so so. I think people went for the price. It was only $3.75/plate. I always want sushi on my birthday because it is one of my favorite foods but we haven't had much luck. The place we went to last year also wasn't too impressive. The conveyer belt sushi concept is a fun novelty. And they had a robot with a cat's face that played music while it delivered drinks to the table. That was actually my favorite part of our dinner! 😂 I felt like all of the good sushi items came out after we were already full. If you get 15 or more plates, you get a free prize. We only had 7 but the waiter gave us a prize anyway. He must have sensed it was my birthday! 

Our last meal was breakfast before we headed out for home. We got pastries from 85℃ Bakery. Always a good breakfast! 🍪 We got a little extra for the road home. too! Of the places we ate at, I would want to return to Too Thai Street Eats and Coconut Paradise for seconds. I already picked out restaurants I want to try for next year's birthday trip (a Vietnamese place, a different Thai place and a restaurant called Mad for Chicken -- because the name cracks me up).

Now onto reason #2 for the drive down to Texas... shopping!! Wes and I are mostly minimalists but this is the one time a year we really shop. There are very few things that I like so normally shopping bores me but when it comes to fabric, washi tape and stickers, I lose all self control. LOL We spent the first day going to all the shops at Carrollton Town Center. I got tons of washi tape & small gifts from Teso and Daiso, face masks from K-Pop + and, of course, my tokodoki Unicorno 🦄 Sadly, Teso and Daiso didn't have as much tokidoki stuff as they did previously. 

We went fabric shopping our second day. The first shop we went to was Urban Spools. 😍 It is my new favorite fabric store. It has super contemporary and modern prints like Sewciety in Norman, OK, but it was about three times as big. They had a lot of Ruby Star Society prints and there was an entire shelf of Alexander Henry prints!! I saw a bunch of different designs that I've only seen online. I wanted to buy two yards of everything but I controlled myself. I wandered around the store twice and picked out my absolute favorites to buy. My prized purchase is two yards of Endless Love by Alexander Henry. The print is of two Victorian lovers in the English countryside but they're skeletons.

After Urban Spools (which is in Dallas), we drove to Plano to visit Not Your Mama's Quilt Store. The owner was incredibly nice. I told her this was our first time in because we're from out of town. She gave us a quick tour of the store and free bottled water. She claimed to be a modern quilt store but I don't think they had as much unique fabric as Urban Spools. It was a nice mix of traditional and contemporary fabric. I recognized some of the fabric from the Road to Oklahoma Shop Hop I did with my sewing club friends this summer. I saw a lot that I liked but knew I could purchase it in OKC so I didn't buy much, just a few fat quarters.

While we were in Plano (which is way closer to Carrollton than I thought it would be), we went to HobbyTown USA. I guess there are HobbyTowns all over but this one is special because it is a flagship store for Gundam model kits. A quarter of the store was devoted entirely to Gundams. 🤖 I have never seen a Gundam tv show or have any interest in model kits but this place was pretty neat. There were tons of models! The wallpaper (floor paper?) on the floor was printed with Gundam pieces and there was a gigantic model RX 78-2.

The last fabric shop we went to was back in Carrollton. The Old Craft Store is a very traditional quilt shop (all florals and fabrics in your grandma's sewing room). I didn't like any of the prints. The owners were kind of rude, too.😑 The two women followed us around like we were shop lifters. One of the women seemed annoyed when she asked if she could help me find something and I told her I was just looking around. The only interesting part of the store is the antique fallout shelter. There is a room in the back with tons of old canned goods, boxes of provisions, and other general store items. 

And thus concludes another vacation and the end of my 37th year. The highlight of my year was finally making friends in my sewing club. 😁 I've been a member of The Oklahoma City Chapter of American Sewing Guild for probably 5 or 6 years now and I have always been friendly with all of the ladies. But, this year, I actually made a group of friends who I hang out with regularly outside of sewing club, and we've let each other into our personal lives and have become genuine friends (instead of just casually sewing... which we do plenty of that together, too!) 

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album - Dallas, TX - December 2021

As mentioned in last week's blog post, we did more than just eat & shop on our vacation. Since it was a trip for my birthday, I got to choose all the activities ... and I chose art museums!!! We went to two very different ones - Rainbow Vomit is a new & trendy art installation and The Meadows Museum is your classic traditional art museum.

Getting to Rainbow Vomit was a harrowing feat. We started the day early and made good time driving in from Oklahoma. We stopped in Buc-ee's to buy lunch and ended up staying way longer than expected. Part of it was because I wanted to examine every snack option & food offering before settling on what I wanted for lunch, and part of it was because it was extremely busy and the lines took forever. I bought tickets for 2pm at Rainbow Vomit. It was about 1:15pm when we left Buc-ee's... 45 minutes is plenty of time, right? Absolutely wrong. 😖 Dallas traffic is terrible with construction everywhere. 🙅😠 Once we realized there was no way we'd make it on time, I called (via Bluetooth in my car... another harrowing feat #ihatetechnology) to ask if we could reschedule our visit. The employee was super nice and said, of course, and moved us to 3pm. We FINALLY made it to the warehouse and ate our lunch in the car before heading in.

Rainbow Vomit is a 2-story art installation. The employee described it as walking into a large comic book. It was pretty big but not as large as our Factory Obscura installation. It was actually quite a bit smaller than I imagined it to be. I knew it was completely black lit from pictures off its website, so I dressed appropriately in neon. I was very bright. 😆 I asked the employee where the public restroom was before we went in. She said to go through the ribbons and there would be a door to my left. The walls were painted to look like a black & white optical illusion so finding the door was confusing. LOL The rest of the installation was very similar in theme. The employee encouraged us to interact with the art and touch/open everything. All the art pieces had a door or window that led elsewhere.

She also told us that the warehouse held a secret, and it was our job to find it. Spoiler alert -- there are several paintings upstairs. If you open one, it connects to a window that opens into another room on the opposite side of the warehouse. Go back downstairs, into the ribbon entrance, push the walls a bit and open the door, then ta-da!! Another room!! ☁🦄☁ The room was awesome. The walls were covered in clouds. The entire room had lights that flashed along to music. This was Wes's favorite room (he said he liked Rainbow Vomit more than other art installations we've been to) and his only comment for improvement is to paint the ceiling with clouds or a scene from outer space. I think it was just painted white. Anyway, we walked around the secret cloud room, and I continued to open everything. At the far corner in a box on top of a pillar were a stack of magnets that signaled that I found the secret! On our way out, the employee asked if we found it. I told her yes and she said we were the first of find the magnet that day! 

I really enjoyed our time at Rainbow Vomit. I liked all the art and I especially liked that it was interactive. My only complaint - their website claims that it is the premier destination for selfies and a majority of the other tourists were there solely for photo opportunities. It was sort of weird because they'd pose in front of something that was clearly supposed to be opened but they would just take their picture and move on. Hardly anyone cared to find the secret. One woman and her friends even asked me to just tell them there it was (presumably so they can run to it and post a silly Tik Tok). The social media/selfie age is quite sad. 😬 Rant over. LOL My favorite part of the installation was the ribbons and streamers we walked through to enter the exhibit. There was glitter all over the walls and floor, which was also rad. Wes and I both liked the balloon wall and picked out our favorite balloon. 

The next day, we went to The Meadows Museum. It's a small art museum on the Southern Nazarene University campus, similar in size to the art museum at The University of Oklahoma campus. I wanted to go because they had a temporary exhibition of historical Spanish fashion. The exhibit had pieces on loan from the Madrid Museum of Fashion. I was VERY disappointed that I didn't know about this museum when I studied abroad. I feel like I went to every other museum in Madrid... how did I miss the fashion museum??? Anyway, the temporary collection at the Meadows was a bit lackluster. I was expecting several pieces and gorgeous gowns. Besides what I photographed, there were 2 or 3 ladies' dresses, 2 children's outfits and some matador capes. They were very nice and well preserved, but I wanted more! LOL My favorite pieces were the shoes. 👠 They were TINY!! Everything was tiny! I guess humans were much smaller back then, but I never expected they'd be that small. Some of the garments would have been short on me and I'm barely 5'3".

Even though the fashion exhibit wasn't extensive, I am still so so so glad we went because the remainder of the museum was amazing. 😍 The Meadows Museum houses the largest collection of Spanish art outside of Spain and all of the Spanish masters were represented. It was like a miniature Prado. Back in the early 2000s, the Prado had a monthly free-admission day for students. I studied abroad in Spain for a semester, so you better believe that I went to each and every student day. I taught myself a lot about Spanish art history from my numerous trips and I am happy to report that I can still recognize elements in certain artists' work. We walked into the room that housed the Meadows's Greco painting (center right in the photo collage below) and I told Wes, "Hey, I bet that's a Greco. Look at the saint's elongated fingers." Damn, he sure married a nerd. LOL

The museum had a handful of oil paintings downstairs, but the main attraction was upstairs. There were several galleries with religious art and oil paintings. I am not religious, but I was raised Catholic so I can appreciate the storytelling represented by the pieces. Plus, my favorite medium is oil on canvas so of course I'd love everything there. And the attention to detail!! 💓💓💓💓 I stood in front of the painting of the woman in the blue dress holding her shawl (large top left in photo collage below) and stared at it forever. Her clothes looked so real, and the sky is gorgeous. *drool* There was so much to marvel at. The Meadows had a couple of pieces by Goya, Valezquez, and El Greco. There was 1 DalÍ and a few Picassos and Mirós. It was seriously like a mini-Prado!

I'm the type of nerdy museum goer who reads all the informational plaques and enjoys facts & history behind the art. Unfortunately, it has been so long that I've forgotten almost all that I learned from our visit in December. So I don't have any fun facts to regale. It was super amazing nevertheless. Wes enjoyed himself, too. Our only complaint is the lighting. The paintings were hung extremely high on the wall, almost directly under the lights. It was a little difficult to look at the paintings without seeing a glare (and hurting your neck!). 

It was so great to go to Rainbow Vomit and The Meadows Museum. They were both spectacular but so different. I love how art can express so many things and make you feel so much wonder. It was a wonderful birthday trip. I'm crossing my fingers that we can do more travelling in 2022. 🤞