A Kid-Friendly Trip to Fort Worth

A few weeks ago the husband took a couple days off of work and we decided to do a little overnight trip to Fort Worth with the boys. From where we live it's about a 45 minute drive, so it's super easy to just hop on over for a fun day or two.

On Friday we got up and left the house basically ON TIME which was a miracle. I think we wanted to leave by 9 and it was like 9:15 when we were pulling out of the drive way. Seriously, that's miraculous with two children. We stopped at Starbucks because duh we would be needing caffeine, and then we headed straight to the Fort Worth zoo. We are super fortunate because we have two really awesome zoos close to us - we're just about thirty minutes from the Dallas zoo. We had only been to the Fort Worth zoo once before when Grayson was just over a year old, plus we haven't spent much time in Fort Worth in general, so we decided to visit that one this time. Grayson was SO dang excited to get to the zoo. He still says he wants to be a "kiger" when he grows up and is super into the Madagascar movies and The Lion Guard, so he could not wait to see all the animals when we got there.

The zoo is super nice and clean and really beautiful actually, the exhibits are all really well-maintained and the animals look healthy and happy (or as happy as an animal can look I suppose?). It is a really big zoo, so we spent a good four or five hours walking around looking at everything. Obviously Grayson was super pumped about the tigers, but he was seriously overjoyed when looking at just about every single animal. The lions, giraffes, elephants, monkeys, and flamingos were all very big hits with him. I'm sure Gavin was equally excited, but he spent probably 75% of the time napping in his stroller. Oh, to be a baby.

They also have a really cute Texas area in the zoo that has lots of animals native to Texas and looks like a little western town. After you wind your way allllll the way through the zoo this is kind of the end of the line. Or at least it was for the path we took. In that area there's a train that you can ride that will take you back to basically the front of the zoo, so this is where we decided to call it a day. Grayson was also super excited about the train ride and the fifteen minute wait for it to get back to let us load up was torture for him.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous that day, so it made it nice to just take our time and wander around. After several hours, we left and went to Joe T. Garcia's for lunch/dinner. This place is pretty legendary in Fort Worth, and the only other time I had been I waited for over an hour to get in standing in a line that wrapped around and around the little ramp out front. You just show up and get in line and go in that order. We got super lucky though, because even though it was a Friday, we got there a little before five so we got right in. You sit on this gorgeous patio, and there are literally two things to choose from to eat, enchiladas or fajitas. Kind of strange to not have options, but the food was pretty delicious so I didn't mind too much. The atmosphere is great, so it was a really enjoyable meal.

After eating we went to check in to our hotel downtown Fort Worth. The downtown area is really cool and quite a bit different than Dallas. There were a ton of people walking around, lots of places to eat. After we checked in we changed and relaxed for a few minutes, then loaded the kids up in the double stroller and went to walk around.

We were right near Sundance Square, which is a really fun area. There is a huge splash pad type thing right in the center and they have music playing over speakers, so Grayson loved it. You aren't supposed to play in the splash pad area at night, but of course Grayson got right to the edge and got his feet soaked. We sat there for quite awhile just enjoying the weather and letting him dance around. Then we continued to walk around, and (unfortunately for us) spotted a few horse drawn carriages. Since we had the stroller we couldn't go on one, and Grayson lost his mind he was so disappointed. He seriously cried and wailed and refused to walk or get in the stroller or basically function as a human being the entire way back to the room, which took a good twenty minutes. Overtired children are just the BEST.

The next morning we woke up and had breakfast at Lucile's, which I guess is another Fort Worth classic. It was actually really really good, and we stuffed ourselves silly. After breakfast we headed back home, much to Grayson's disappointment. The first thing he says every morning is "Where are we going today?" - he LOVES to go, and he really hates when it's time to go home. However, after a busy 24 hours, mommy and daddy were very ready to go home and relax a bit (ha, relax with small children). 

If you live anywhere in the DFW area, I seriously recommend every single thing we did while we were there. I'm sure there are a ton of other kid-friendly things to do in Fort Worth, but every stop we made was great. We're planning another Texas trip here in the next couple of months, so hopefully I'll have another post to share then!