Category Archives: Family Adventures

Mineral Wells Fossil Park

Posted on by

Mineral Wells Fossil Park will capture young paleontologists’ imaginations. Fossil hunters can search for treasures, and the best part, you can keep whatever you find. Located just 80 miles west of Dallas, Mineral Wells Fossil Park opened to the public in 2010.

Park history. The Dallas Paleontological Society, City of Mineral Wells and Mineral Wells Chamber of Commerce partnered to create the park at the site of the city’s old borrow pit. Years ago, the town used earth dug from the area, the borrow pit, for dirt fill at the city dump. The pit was then closed in the 1990s and forgotten. Twenty years of rain and wind eroded the borrow pit’s sides exposing mineralized fossils in among shale and dirt.

No dinosaurs here. The best fossil hunting follows strong rains. The rain washes away dirt exposing the fossils on the ridges and in the troughs of furrows throughout the North Texas Ramblings Mineral Wells Fossil Parkborrow pit. Readily visible, the fossils are intermixed with small rocks. You aren’t likely to find a dinosaur here. The fossils are small, mostly crinoids (sea lily) fragments. While small, the crinoids and shells are everywhere you search. In just a few hours, our family had two sandwich bags filled with small fossils ranging in size from a pea to half dollar.

The fossils are about 300 million years old. During the Pennsylvania Period, ancient sea lilies, urchins, clams, oysters, sea snails and sharks lived where prickly pear cactus thrive today. One such sea basin submerged the area around Mineral Wells. When the creatures died, their bodies fell to the sea floor. Minerals replaced the animals’ cellular material leaving behind a rock record for us to find millions of years later.

Fast forward from the ancient sea to the City of Mineral Wells old borrow pit. Sea creature fossils are so plentiful at Mineral Wells Fossil Park, that visitors for decades will be able to explore the past and collect ancient fragments of species long extinct. A large exhibit sign at the park entrance illustrates with photographs and descriptions the types of fossils commonly found at the site.

Fossil hunting guidelines. Mineral Wells Fossil Park has a few rules in place to ensure the park’s continued success. While you may keep whatever fossils you find, they must be for your personal use. No commercial fossil hunting is allowed. Park rules forbid power tools and limit guests to hand-held tools like a garden trowel. After a good rain, the hand shovels aren’t even necessary.

When you go. There is no shade at the park – hat, sunscreen and lots of water are a must on hot days.  Wear old clothes for digging in the dirt and boots are a good idea if it’s recently rained. Additionally, bring plenty of small baggies for storing your fossils. As in other parts of Texas, be alert for stinging insects and snakes. Called a primitive park, Mineral Wells Fossil Park has no running water or flush toilets, though there is a portable toilet in the parking lot. For those wanting a more scenic location for a picnic, visit Lake Mineral Wells State Park (Park Road 71, Mineral Wells), located just east of Mineral Wells.

Mineral Wells Fossil Park (2375 Indian Creek Road, Mineral Wells) is open Friday – Monday from 8 a.m. to dusk. Park entrance is free.

Plano Balloon Festival

Posted on by

The 35th Annual Plano Balloon Festival begins Friday evening September 19 and runs through Sunday, September 21. Bands, bounce houses, climbing wall, food North Texas Ramblings Plano Balloon Festivalconcessions and exhibitors’ booths are all part of the fun, but the highlight is the balloons. The event features balloon races, balloon glows (Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.), and balloon tethered rides.

Lift off. If you’ve never been, I urge you to go to a balloon launch. There are five launches scheduled during the Plano Balloon Festival. Evening balloon launches are at 6 pm Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

But my favorite balloon launches are in the morning. You can catch these on either Saturday or Sunday at 7 am. Our family likes to bring a picnic breakfast, lawn chairs, and a sense of wonder as the hot air balloons take to the skies at sunrise. It’s an incredible sight.

Viewing tips. While it’s a little more costly, I recommend the Collin County Community College Spring Creek Campus prime parking. The cost is $10 but it gets you near the hill that affords the best viewing. There is an additional fee for festival entrance. Concessions are available for sale at the festival. Also, don’t forget to bring chairs or picnic blanket.

Balloon Run. If you are a runner, Plano Balloon Festival sponsors a half marathon, 5k, and family-friendly 1k race on Sunday, September 21. The races start just after the morning balloon launch. Race participants receive balloon festival tickets as well as t-shirts. Advance registration is required

Details. The Plano Balloon Festival is held at Oak Point Park (2801 E Spring Creek, Plano). For more information check out the Festival’s web site at planoballoonfest.org

Money Factory

Posted on by

What would it be like to work surrounded by almost a billion dollars? I found out with a trip to the Money Factory. Located in Fort Worth, the Money Factory (also known as the North Texas Ramblings Money FactoryBureau of Engraving and Printing or BEP) conducts free tours of its facility, one of only two locations that print U.S. currency.

The buck starts here! Imagine printing presses churning out sheets of hundred dollar bills. Or pallets stacked with money bricks, 400 notes to a brick. On any given business day, the Fort Worth BEP produces 36 million notes valued at $526 million.

The tour is conducted from a glassed-in, elevated walkway above the factory floor. Visitors see all three types of printing processes used to make money.

  • The intaglio printing pushes ink into the sheet giving money its three dimensional, textural feel.
  • The off-set press gives higher denomination bills their color.
  • The letter-press printing process serializes the notes.

Between each printing step, currency sheets dry in controlled areas on pallets.

Laundering money. Guides provide fun facts throughout the Money Factory tour. I learned that paper currency is actually a misnomer. U.S. notes are printed on specially designed sheets made of cotton and linen fibers. The fiber blend prevents money from falling apart in a washing machine or tearing when it’s folded too many times. To meet BEP quality assurance standards, currency must be able to withstand six washing machine encounters!

What you won’t see. The Money Factory has just one customer, the Federal Reserve Bank. Security restrictions prevent BEP visitors from viewing the 19,000-square- foot Federal Reserve vault that stores the finished currency prior to its shipment to one of the 12 Federal Reserve banks.

Learn about BEP. A self-guided walk through the visitor center is almost as much fun as the factory tour. Interactive exhibits and displays provide detailed information on all the engraving and printing processes involved in currency production. My favorite exhibit told the story of the Mutilated Currency Division. They refund damaged money, like currency damaged by fire or flood. The most outlandish example of the division’s work involved a man and his money eating cow. The man killed the cash consuming cow and sent the damaged currency (still in the bovine’s stomach) to the Mutilated Currency Division. And yes, he did get his money refunded.

Early counterfeiters. I also learned about the history of money and counterfeiting. Cacao beans were used as currency by the Aztecs. Some would counterfeit the cacao bean by removing its meaty center and replacing it with mud. Today’s counterfeiters are more sophisticated and BEP uses a variety of measures to foil attempts to counterfeit currency including the use of color shifting ink, security strips and more.

The 10 cent note. Surprisingly, the United States didn’t use paper currency until the Civil War. In 1861, the Treasury printed fractional currency in denominations of 3, 5, 10, 25 and 50 cents to offset coin hoarding. Today, BEP produces $1, $2, $5, $10, $50 and $100 notes. The largest denomination printed was the $100,000 note used only between banks prior to the advent of electronic fund transfers.

When you go. The Money Factory in Fort Worth is located at 9000 Blue Mound Road. Public tours are Tuesday through Friday (except federal holidays) from 8:30 a.m.to 4:30 p.m. All visitors must pass through security. BEP advises people to allow up to a half hour for the security check during its busiest times (spring and summer break). Cell phones, cameras, backpacks and any sort of weapon including pocket knives are strictly forbidden. For more information call the visitor center at (817) 231-4000.

Rory Meyers Children’s Garden

Posted on by

Calling it a children’s garden is misleading. A visit to the Rory Meyers Children’s Garden at the Dallas Arboretum is like a visit to an outdoor, natural science museum. And best of all, you don’t need to a kid to have fun here!

North Texas Ramblings Rory Meyers Children's GardenCovering eight acres, the Rory Meyers Children’s Garden is so chocked full of activities that we spent hours exploring its outdoor (and indoor) exhibits.

Pure Energy. Located at the bottom of the garden, Pure Energy is a favorite spot during hot summer days. Explore renewable energy from solar, wind, and water on a stage surrounded by a small pond. Little kids enjoy getting wet with the hands-on water exhibit. Adults and older kids can experience a tornado and learn more about wind turbines.

Texas Wetlands. While we didn’t see much in the way of living wildlife (aside from birds and squirrels), bronze animal statues populate the area around the wetlands. And we learned all about the vital role different plants play in filtering and cleaning wetlands. Who knew cattails purify water better than my faucet filter?

First Adventure. Located just at the Rory Meyers garden entrance, the First Adventure area is what you would expect from a children’s garden.  It’s a play area for the littlest garden explorers. Kids crawl on giant whimsical ants, play with exhibits set at toddler height, and plant table-top vegetable gardens.

OmniGlobe. One of only five in Texas, my family’s favorite exhibit was the OmniGlobe located inside the Exploration Center. This unique system projects simulations onto a spherical (think Earth) display. We watched continental formation over hundred millions of years, and simulations of tsunamis and hurricanes. The OmniGlobe displays astronomical phenomenon, too. My teenager thought this exhibit alone was worth the visit.

Secret Garden. Children (and even adults) looking for an adventure quest will enjoy this garden maze. While there were no dragons, we used our imagination as we wove our way towards the castle at the center of the maze.

When you go. Open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., the Dallas Arboretum is at 8525 Garland Road. Admission is $15 for adults and $10 for children. Admission to the Rory Meyers Children’s Garden is an additional $3. Situated just outside the children’s garden, the Garden Cafe by Two Sisters sells a wide variety of pre-packaged snacks and sandwiches, along with drinks and ice cream bars.

Visitor Tip: A Dallas Arboretum membership can pay for itself after just two visits. The family membership is $125. Sounds expensive, but members can bring a total of six people with them each time they visit the arboretum (and the guests do not have to be family).

Waco Day Trip

Posted on by

If you are looking for a local adventure, how about a Waco Day Trip?  Waco, located about 100 miles south of Dallas, has fun and unique museums to explore.  Two of my family’s favorites are the Dr. Pepper Museum and Texas Rangers Hall of Fame Museum.

Dr. Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute

“I’m a pepper. He’s a pepper…Wouldn’t you’d like to be a pepper, too?” 

North Texas Ramblings Dr Pepper Museum WacoRemember that jingle from the 1970s Dr. Pepper commercial?  That and even more Dr. Pepper advertising are displayed at Waco’s Dr. Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute.  The first two floors are devoted to Dr. Pepper, its founders, how it was made, and how it was sold.  The museum is a must for Dr. Pepper fans.

Dr. Charles Alderton created the beverage back in 1885 at a drugstore in Waco by experimenting with different fruit syrups and carbonated water.  Who knew his concoction would be around 125 years later?

Once the Artesian and Manufacturing Bottling Company, the museum is located right where Dr Pepper was bottled at the turn of the twentieth century.  A portion of the first floor recreates both Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store where Alderton served the drink.

Dr. Pepper is now marketed and sold by the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, so it’s not surprising that the museum also has memorabilia from other soda brands like Orange Crush and 7 UP.

The museum’s third floor is dubbed the Free Enterprise Institute.  Aside from a few sayings by Adam Smith, visitors will not find the history of capitalism here.  Rather, the bulk of the exhibits are about W. W. “Foots” Clements.  Clements rose up through the Dr. Pepper ranks from delivery man to CEO.

Be sure to get your Dr. Pepper at the soda fountain before you leave.  Served hot (yes, hot) or cold, the drink is mixed from syrup and carbonated water, much like it would have been served by Dr. Alderton in 1885.

The Dr. Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute (300 South Fifth Street, Waco) is open Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:15 p.m., and on Sunday from noon to 4:15 p.m.  Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for children.

Texas Rangers Hall of Fame Museum

Formed in 1823 by Stephen Austin as a defense force to protect settlers, the Texas Rangers loom larger than life in our imaginations.  The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame Museum is dedicated to the finest of these lawmen.  The first Texas Rangers were farmers committed to frontier defense.  It was after the Civil War that Texas Rangers shifted to law enforcement and tracking down “bad” guys.

The Texas Rangers Hall of Fame recounts the tales of many of its most famous rangers, like Captain William McDonald whose reputation made him known as the “man who would charge hell with a bucket of water.”  The museum tells the tales of these men with factual accounts, artifacts and anecdotal tales.

It’s the tales that are the most fun, like the one about McDonald  – A frontier town hosting a prize fight sent a plea to the Rangers for help keeping the peace.  The town fathers were appalled when one single Ranger, McDonald, arrived.  McDonald is purported to have responded, “You only got one prize fight.  You only need one Ranger.”

While few in number, these western lawmen figured prominently in keeping the peace including resolving border issues with Mexico from 1870s through early 1900s, and it’s the Rangers Texas turned to hunt down bootleggers and gangsters in the 1920s and 1930s.  It was a Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer, who tracked down and shot the famed gangsters Bonnie and Clyde in 1934.

Most of the museum focuses on real Texas Rangers, but one section is dedicated to our fictional heroes.  An exhibit, complete with biography, tells the tale of the Lone Ranger who captured the imagination of many young boys from 1933 and onward.  Dozens of movies have been about the Texas Rangers not to mention several TV series like Walker Texas Ranger whose reruns entertain us today.

A 45-minute film about the Texas Rangers’ history is well worth the time, and runs throughout the day in the museum theater.

The Texas Rangers Hall of Fame Museum (100 Texas Range Trail – I-35 exit 335B, Waco) is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.  Admission is $7 for adults and $3 for children.