Dallas

We traveled to Dallas mainly to see a concert by Kings Of Leon. The concert was at an outdoor pavilion in downtown Dallas (Dos Equis Pavilion) that was pretty cool. We had pretty good seats, close enough to see the stage well, and we really enjoyed the concert. The band sounded really great, even though they had one of their touring musicians filling in on lead guitar for Matthew Followill, who stayed home from that stage of the tour to be with his family after his wife recently had a new baby. The fill-in lead guitarist did a great job, though it wasn't until halfway through the show when they introduced him that I solved the mystery of why their guitarist looked so different than I remembered.

I guess we actually got pretty lucky that we got to see them play at all, as a few days later they cancelled the rest of their dates for the month to go back home to see their Mom (the mom of the three Followill brothers in the band - Matthew their lead guitarist is their cousin and their common grandfather was named Leon, which is where they got their band name) who was very sick and died the day after they got back to see her.

Kristi, Draeden, Liam and I all liked the concert and have been listening to all of their albums quite a bit since then. My favorite albums by them are their first 3 and then their most recent 2, though I also enjoy many songs from their 3 albums between those. My very favorite album of theirs is their 2nd, Aha Shake Heartbreak.

The next day after the concert (Saturday, Sep 18), we drove back downtown in Dallas to tour The Sixth Floor Museum, which is on the 6th floor of the Book Depository, from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy. They have the corner by that window closed off with glass and behind the glass they have recreated the setup from that day where he used stacks of book boxes to hide himself from construction workers on the other side of the floor and also set up some boxes as a support for his rifle. Overall the museum was pretty interesting, though I though a bit too toned down. For example, they showed several frames from the Zapruder film, but none of the more graphic ones, such as frame 313. I would have expected both a full playing of the film as well as showing all of the frames separately, but I suspect they wanted to make the display less graphically violent.

We also walked around down Elm street and over by the "grassy knoll" outside the Book Depository building, where it was interesting to discover that there are still people that set up tables and sell conspiracy books there everyday.

Saturday evening we ate at a taco chain called Torchy's which was amazing and made me wish there were some in Utah (Colorado is the closest).

Sunday we flew back home. While in Dallas, we stayed in a nice hotel suite in a suburb that had a fairly decent breakfast buffet.