Waco Woes

In June we took a day trip to see the Waco Zoo.  (Apparently the zoo here in Austin is lacking so everyone goes elsewhere.)  It's a 2-hour drive to Waco, but with a bunch of friends going and the kids bored from the heat of Summer I decided to embark on the adventure…(I don't know what I was thinking.) The drive started with whining and questions of 'Are we there yet' after the first 5 min., during which we drove through a really dark cloud and hit an absolute downpour. I could not see a thing through the sheets of rain so we drove really slow, making the journey a million times longer. Still living on a prayer to make it to Waco in one piece we finally arrived, only to be welcomed with flashing lights. Grrrr. A cop decided to meet his quota of tickets for the month and pulled me over. (I stopped at that stop sign, I swear.) I was hoping he would have mercy with my carload of screaming kids…apparently not. So glad I could contribute $$ to the City of Waco. (We won't go into the details of Drivers School after that event.) While waiting for the cop to finish up my ticket I also noticed we were below empty on gas…lovely. We headed to a lone gas station where the pump went haywire and the employees couldn't help me because they didn't speak English or understand what was happening. By this point I was ready to turn around and go home, Waco and I were not getting along very well.  To make a long story short, we finally arrived at the zoo but didn't go in because of rain.  We ended up at the Children's Museum with our friends which gratefully turned to a success.  The moral of this whole story is...don't drive to Waco.  If you actually want to go somewhere fun with friends, drive an extra hour and go to Dallas. End of story.  Grateful we were with awesome friends and we made it out alive.