Highview Campground COE, Ennis, Texas
When the famine had spread over the whole country, Joseph opened the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe throughout Egypt. ~ Genesis 41:56 Were you as surprised as I was that Joseph sold back the grain to his constituents? In a much later chapter, we’ll learn that Joseph ended up collecting all the money, livestock and land in all of Egypt, reducing the people of Egypt to nothing more than servants of Pharoah. Egypt slowly moved from capitalism to a dictatorship, with everyone relying on Pharaoh for everything. This one really surprised me! Maybe when I get to that part, the Holy Spirit will enlighten me.
It’s by an artist named Moeyaert (Netherlands) and was done in 1690.
Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard about September 11, 2001? I had gone into my aunt’s house to pick her up to go grocery shopping and she had the TV on. The Twin Towers had just been hit. We talked about it. We discussed whether or not to go to the store, and decided since things were happening in New York, we could still go to the store. So we did. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that we began to realize the scope of what happened that day.
Do you remember where you were and what you were doing on November 22, 1963? I was only four years old, but believe it or not it is one of my rare memories from that time. I don’t know what I was doing, but I definitely remember my mom. She was ironing with the TV on and crying. I don’t know why I remember that. Maybe because my mom was crying, and I’d never seen that before. Maybe it was the tension around me, even from the TV. Maybe it was because things weren’t “normal” that day.
November 22, 1963 is the day our 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated. It was a day that affected our entire nation, every bit as much as when President Lincoln was assassinated, or 9/11 happened.
Today, we drove to Dallas to visit The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. The place where Lee Harvey Oswald stood in front of a sixth-floor corner window and waited with his high-powered rifle, before firing three shots and killing the President, as his open-air motorcade drove by.
But since we arrived in town extra early, (thank you, Waze, and my brother David for telling Blaine about it) we had time to kill. It seems Dallas has quite a few little parks strewn about. They call them plazas. One is called Pioneer Plaza and Blaine had read it wasn’t to be missed. It was close to the parking garage where we left the Jeep today. (Blaine had pre-paid for that on-line as well, information which will become important if you read all the way to the end of today’s post) In fact, everything we did today was within walking distance of the garage, which was kinda the point.
They weren’t working today.
Pioneer Plaza truly was not to be missed! Incredible would be a great word for it! When it was completed in 1994, there were three mounted cowboys and 49 steer. All made of bronze. And all life-sized! Since then, one cowboy and nine steer have been removed because of instability and are in the process of being restored. This takes time because money has to be raised. Maybe some have been returned, we didn’t count, but for certain one cowboy was missing.
So much detail! I never would’ve thought of that.
It was time to head over to the book depository.
The museum has a ton of information, but is low on artifacts. It’s mostly reading and looking at pictures. I’ve decided that for that reason, I’m only going to share a few pictures in this post and make a “Special Edition” post to share all the information I have. That way, if someone’s not interested, they don’t have to wade through all of it to get to the rest of our day.
To get in, you have to reserve and pay for your tickets on-line, and you choose what time you’d like to come in. We chose 10am. We showed up at the door, Blaine opened his phone, and in we went.
Only to have to stand in a long queue for another 20 minutes as they carefully allowed only a certain number of people in at a time, because they try to limit to how many can be up there at a time in order to allow for an acceptable flow of traffic. We asked one of the girls working a door if this was normal. She said yes. And then told us, “Spring break last week was diabolical! There were 250 people per hour, all day long.” The other thing we noticed was that there were people of all ages here. It wasn’t just the people around our age or older who were interested. That’s good!
They put us in a freight elevator, went up 6 floors, and were greeted by other staff who directed us where to go and how to get through it.
We basically walked through, single file and read everything. The place was full of people, and if you tried to go around them, you’d miss information, but really, there was nowhere else to go anyway, so you might as well follow along. Even though there was a large crowd, everyone was respectful and quiet. I remember the closer I got to the actual assassination information, the more anxious I got – like waiting for inevitable bad news. Kinda queasy.
I just thought it interesting to see how much things have changed in my lifetime.
The grass on the right and left known as “The Grassy Knoll”, was much smaller than we’d always envisioned.
If you look, you’ll see “Xs” painted on the street which mark where his shots hit. People (mostly teenage girls) would stand out in the street at the “X” and take smiling, laughing, posing selfies.
Not much reverence in our young people today . . . .
Once we completed the sixth floor, we could go up to the seventh where they said they had history of the building. It must be a work in progress, because there wasn’t hardly anything up there, including people. 😊
As we expected, we spent about two hours here. It could’ve been longer. There were some places we skimmed, and videos that we didn’t take the time to watch – mostly because others were already filling the space.
Named for a revered man of Dallas.
The building is the Book Depository.
It’s grown a lot in 59 years.
Time for lunch (there’s a Subway next door), and then another walk to our next timed entrance. This time to the Dallas World Aquarium.
We initially believed it was a church, when we saw it from a distance.
city leaders began talking about what to do.
Word has it that part of the court will once again occupy the building,
and the museum will be dispersed to seven different office buildings around downtown Dallas.
We didn’t even know it existed until I went looking for some sort of ‘transitional’ picture.
We came in from the back and up the sidewalk on the left. : )
You can see the pyramid building from the previous picture in the background.
This too, was not exactly what we expected. I’d read that it had more than just fish – birds and a few mammals were also there – so we decided it would be a good way to spend the afternoon. It was, but we think there were more birds there than fish. 😊
Still, it was very well put together, and even though it was also full of people, the traffic moved quite well. Much of what was in there were things we hadn’t seen before.
with birds and things along the way, seemingly free to move about as they chose.
It was an illusion, but it was a very good one!
He seemed used to posing for pictures. : )
So many beautiful colors on them!!
Going to places like this makes us feel closer to God. Such an incredible display of His Creation!
How could anyone see these things and still deny His existence??
Most of them you had to hunt for, so it was hard to take a picture.
Can’t find his head? His eyes are looking right at you!
They were hard to photograph because of the UV lighting.
You could hardly see the real spider.
We think this might maybe be a catfish (because of the whiskers),
but there was no sign to tell you what all was in the tank.
It seems all, or most of the things in the tank are real stuff they have growing in there.
They burrow their tail end down into the sand, then pop up and down.
making it difficult for my phone to pick up.
This one liked to lay on top the tube for several minutes before taking off again.
Look at the “face”!
Also, what you’re seeing above him through the water is the two floors of walk ways.
Later I have a picture looking down into the tank. : )
Seems instead of shrimp (which makes them pink),
the aquarium feeds them some kind of pellets that make them orange.
Isn’t that amazing?!?
See the people in the tube?
It was a large picture on the wall to the entrance of one of the restrooms.
I couldn’t resist! We didn’t get a chance to see this guy in his habitat.
As are all the other things in the tanks!
It didn’t take us as long as we’d anticipated here, so we had some time to kill. We walked around the aquarium a little more, then ventured outside and walked around the city, heading in the general direction of the Jeep and dinner. Along the way, we came across several other plazas – one was full of water everywhere! It was shady and cool and sounded like a rushing waterfall, so we found a bench and rested our weary feet for a bit.
And it sits on private property!
And this zoomed in picture is the closest we could get.
Pretty cool, huh?!?
This is the strangest road ever!
It says 35 E or W, but the road runs north and south most of the time!
So you get directions like, “Drive six miles on 35 east north.” Craziness! And confusing!
By the time we got to the restaurant, we were still about fifteen minutes too early. They don’t open till 5:00pm. So we sat on a granite ledge across the street and waited for time to pass, keeping our eye on the “open” sign. I want to take the opportunity while we’re waiting, to say that we were pleasantly surprised at downtown Dallas. It was very clean and visitor friendly – at least the parts we were in.
Okay. The ‘open’ sign is on now, let’s go eat!
Japanese tonight at Sushiya! Oh my, was it good! Everything was so fresh and delicious! Pigs that we are, we ended up eating everything they brought us, plus even though we were stuffed, we just had to try fried cheesecake. It was also very tasty, but I think we were too full to really appreciate it like we should’ve.
‘Bento’ is unique in that they are able to keep a meal packed neatly and tightly into small squares or rectangles. Traditionally, families would prepare them in the morning to take to work or school for lunch.
It’s like a combo meal for us. : )
This one contains rice, gyoza, California roll sushi, teriyaki chicken, wasabi (that’s the green dot that we don’t even touch!), some type of liquid that didn’t really have any taste, and shrimp tempura. The shrimps are those long, straight things on top. It also had potato, onion and zucchini.
You’d think this would be the end of our day. Well, we did too. Unfortunately, it was not.
We got locked inside the parking garage!
The pre-paid parking didn’t work to let us out! At least there was a call button on the thing and Blaine was able to actually talk to a person, but she was no help whatsoever. After talking to her, we were afraid we’d have to pay the ‘lost ticket’ fee of $24 – in addition to the $20 we’d already paid!
Blaine was able to back up to a reserved parking spot, lock me inside the Jeep, make his way through the large parking garage, to the front desk of the Crown Plaza Hotel. Once he got through the line of people checking in, the desk clerk was able to give him one of their parking passes at no charge. Whew!! Seems someone else, not the hotel actually owns the garage. The desk clerk said it was a new company.
At least the drive home was uneventful. Good thing because we were really tired and Blaine was pretty stressed after the parking garage ordeal. Tomorrow we’ll rest again. Are we starting to sound like old people???