Things to Do in Texas

*For the top yearly events in Austin and the surrounding areas, click here. For the Dallas area, click here. For the Houston area, click here, and for the San Antonio area, click here.

Amarillo

Amarillo is home of the Cadillac Ranch and, therefore, a huge attraction on the path of the Mother Road, Historic Route 66. An art group called The Ant Farm created this public art installation in 1974, which is free to see. A number of Cadillacs have their front ends buried in the dirt with their back ends sticking up out of the ground. The leaning angle of the cars is supposed to match the angle of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

The cars have been spray painted constantly by visiting tourists over the years (don't worry, that's what's supposed to happen). So, when you go, take your spray paint and paint whatever you'd like on the cars. Most, like us, paint their names. We didn't take a paint can with us, but, luckily, there was enough half emptied cans around the cars for others to use. So many people visit this place daily that whatever you paint in the morning has probably been painted over by that evening!

Austin

"Keep Austin Weird". You'll surely see bumper stickers or even hear someone say this while in town. Austin is the "Live Music Capital of the World" and has become an known for music, art, and for the odd movie and music festival that has grown to include so much more than just movies and music, South by Southwest.

There's a great dog park right beside Lady Bird Lake. People swim and stand up paddle the lake. Besides joining the Zen like state of the Austinites, you can party down with them on their famous 6th Street, which is filled with just SO many bars.

What else is there to do in Austin? You can take a boat tour on Lake Lady Bird to see the giant bat colony that lives under Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge. This is the world's largest urban bat colony, with between 750,000 to 1.5 million bats, and they can be seen nightly as they emerge from beneath the bridge at dusk to go feeding. When their nightly hunt begins, they stream from under the bridge and look like a giant black ribbon in the sky.

Also, a steep climb up the steps of Mount Bonnell will provide fantastic views of the whole city. Austin also has historic homes and museums to tour, such as the author O'Henry's house (aka William Sidney House), the Daniel H. and William T. Caswell houses, the George Washington Carver Museum, and 19th century sculptor Elizabet Ney's Museum.

While we were in town, we ALSO toured Austin's dark, haunted past by following the stories from the book, "Haunted Austin." Tours are also available, we just couldn't go on them at the time because we didn't want to interrupt everyone's fun with crying youngsters. Our boys were about 2 and a half at this point and, of course, would spontaneously cry anywhere we went...haunted or otherwise. Sadly, same trip, they cried all the way through Graceland... So, back to Austin's haunts, the Driskill Hotel, Moonshine Bar & Grill, and the Texas State Capital Building.

The Driskill is a hotel opened in 1866 where the owner, who lost the hotel a year after it opened and later died "a broken man," now haunts the hotel. Some have even purportedly seen the ghost of Lyndon Johnson in the mezzanine area.

The Moonshine Bar & Grill (be sure to order the Green Chile Macaroni!!) is one of the oldest buildings in Austin that now houses a great restaurant and is said to be haunted by people killed in a flood in the early 1900s. I'm not sure if my son, Eli, saw a ghost or not...but he scream-cried for a while during dinner, so I had to take him out on the porch to sit while my wife and other son finished up (much to the happiness of the other patrons).

People have seen many ghosts walking the path to the capital building at all times, night OR day!

View from Mount Bonnell

Texas State Capital Building

Congress Avenue Bridge Bat Migration

6th Street

Moonshine Bar & Grill by Jeremy Keith

Dallas

Our goal with Dallas was twofold, first we wanted to see everything about John F. Kennedy, and second we wanted to see the Ewing Ranch, from the show, "Dallas." There are many things to see on a JFK tour, including Dealey Plaza and the book depository where Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK and currently the 6th Floor Museum that chronicles JFK's presidency and assassination. You can walk the area to see the famed "Grassy Knoll," see the "X's" on the road that mark the spots where he was shot during the motorcade, and visit the JFK Memorial. Be aware, you will meet conspiracists with pamphlets letting you know what they believe "really happened." For me, that was a part of the fun that I was looking for!

JFK Memorial

6th Floor Museum

Fence at the Grassy Knoll

The Spot where JFK was Shot

Dallas is also home to Reunion Tower, the Dallas World Aquarium, the Dallas Zoo, Pioneer Plaza with the large cattle drive sculpture, and the Dallas Cowboys. Reunion Tower, a 561 foot tall observation tower, is one of the most recognizable landmarks of Dallas and has an observation deck and rotating restaurant, Five Sixty with food by Wolfgang Puck.

Reunion Tower

Pioneer Plaza

Cowboys Stadium

On to "Dallas" the TV show and Southfork Ranch...which is technically in Parker, Texas NEXT to Dallas. This is the ranch home of the Ewings, stars of the iconic nighttime soap opera that ran for 14 seasons in its original run, and a new series is set to start its 3rd season next year. The house and surrounding ranch buildings used in the show can be toured, complete with memorabilia, back stage stories, and a gift shop!

Fort Worth

While in Fort Worth, you can see a cattle drive, visit the historic Stockyards, go out on a night on the town to Billy Bob's Texas, shop for cowboy and western wear (like at M.L. Leddy's famous bootmaking shop), stop in at the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, or even stay in a haunted brothel!

The historic Fort Worth Stockyard district, also known as "Cowtown," is the former livestock market of Fort Worth that started back in 1866. Today, they are the last standing stockyards in the US and have two daily cattle drives through the old downtown streets. Genuine Texas cowhands, with historically accurate clothing and saddles, act as the drovers for the cattle drives and are available before and after each drive for photo ops.

The Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame "honors those men and women who have shown excellence in the business and support of rodeo and the western lifestyle in Texas." The Cowgirl Hall of Fame honors the women. Then, there's the Texas Trail of Fame with sidewalk stars like the Hollywood Walk of Fame that honors cowboys and cowgirls from Calamity Jane and Butch Cassidy to John Wayne and Roy Rogers. Check the schedule of the Cowtown Coliseum, which hosts rodeos, wild west shows, and concerts, and you could see a truly authentic rodeo while in town.

Billy Bob's Texas

Texas Trail of Fame

Cattle Drive

Still in Fort Worth, we made sure to stop at Billy Bob's Texas, "The World's Largest Honky Tonk" which is often featured on the country line dancing shows on TV. I'm not sure if it's ALWAYS family friendly, but it sure was the night we went. Our boys, who were only pushing 3 at the time, got out on the dance floor and cut a rug!

There are plenty of great places to stay in Fort Worth, but we were looking to be right in the heart of the Cowtown area...and found an old haunted brothel that had been turned into a hotel! Who could pass that up?? Miss Molly's, the haunted hotel in question, has been featured on the show "Ghosthunters" on multiple episodes. The hotel had bibles in each room, open to certain verses. They said it kept the spirits away. My wife wouldn't let me close our bible to see what would happen...since the kids were with us... But, she DID seemingly get stuck in the shared bathroom that wasn't locked. She yelled and pulled on the door, thought I was on the other side holding it (I wasn't), and the door wouldn't budge until she asked the ghosts to "please let her out." Who knows!

Galveston

Before my travels through Texas, I was unaware of the huge German population there. Apparently, when immigrants started coming to the US en mass during the 1800's, many Germans came and a LOT of them settled in Texas. There's Bavarian architecture, German style festivals, and German named towns and amusement parks, like New Braunfels and Schlitterbahn, respectively.

Schlitterbahn is a chain of huge water parks began in New Braunfels but now throughout Texas, in Galveston, Corpus Christie, and South Padre Island. They're known for having the highest and fastest waterslides in the world! We kept seeing billboard after billboard for "Schlitterbahn, New Braunfels"...for me, this park gets my vote for "Park Name Most Fun to Say."

Galveston's Pleasure Pier is another Galveston fun stop, with a carnival atmosphere including rides and games.

Kemah

Kemah Bay Boardwalk is a family fun destination about an hour and a half outside of Galveston. It's filled with, of course, a really nice boardwalk area, rides, wide choices of restaurants, carnival games and food vendors, people drawing caricatures, and even a small aquarium called Stingray Reef, where you can pet stingrays!

Houston

Houston, like so many of the big cities in Texas (this state is HUGE), has the typical big city activities like museums, aquariums, and zoos. They have the Houston Zoo, the Houston Aquarium, and numerous museums. In case you haven't read elsewhere on this site, though, if I can see the equivalent of something in my home state, I see no reason in seeking said thing out in other states. The unique and the special PER state is what I'm looking for. So, if you have a zoo, great. Museums, Zoos, and aquariums are wonderful and educational for you and your kids. Go to the one closest to you. If Houston, or whichever big city zoo, is your closest, go have a blast. However, now, if you're thinking of the San Diego Zoo or the Georgia Aquarium or the New York Museum of Natural History or the Chicago Art Institute (as examples), these are very notable and huge and thus surpass the typical and are special places to seek out.

However, Houston does have a couple of stops that fit the unique bill. There is one giant piece of...art, I guess it would be… called the Waterwall in Houston. So, that's what we went to see. The Waterwall fountain sculpture is 64 feet tall and always has rushing fountain waters, making a waterfall in the middle of the city. The designers called it a "horseshoe of rushing water."

Another Houston stop can be summed up in the following iconic line, "Houston, we have a problem!" Being the NASA communications base for so many years, it only makes sense that there's a museum and visitor center dedicated to it. Space Center Houston is "the official visitor center of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center—the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's center for human spaceflight activities."

Lubbock

Lubbock has the West Texas Walk of Fame, which began as a tribute to rock legend Buddy Holly. With Buddy as the central statue, and the first inductee, other artists, like Waylon Jennings, have been added over the years.

San Antonio

There's a lot to do in San Antonio. The most famous attraction in town is, of course, The Alamo. The Alamo is an old Spanish mission made famous by the battle during the Texas Revolution in 1836.

However, there are a number of other beautiful Spanish missions to see as well, most of which can be found on Mission Trail. There's Mission Concepcion, Mission San Jose, Mission San Juan Capistrano, and Mission Espada. While the Alamo is typically packed, you'll find the other missions much less bombarded with tourists, and you can walk the grounds much more comfortably and at peace.

Be sure to also spend time in San Antonio's famous River Walk area, where you can walk or take a boat tour through the canal on the San Antonio River and see tons of restaurants, nightclubs, and plenty of shopping.

San Antonio is also home to "the oldest saloon in Texas", the Buckhorn Saloon. It has been turned into 2 museums, but still serves food and has its bar. There's the Buckhorn Saloon Museum, which has the wildlife killed and mounted by the hunter that owned Buckhorn, Alfred Friedrich. The other museum is the Texas Ranger Museum, which houses the history artifacts of the Texas Rangers from their inception through the Bonnie & Clyde years to today.

If you're looking to get into some rides and adventures, San Antonio has you covered there as well, with Sea World, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, an aquarium and a zoo.