Frisco Texas Has Fun Things to Do

“It would take us 22 hours to drive back to New York,” my 13-year-old son reports while lounging belly-up on his queen size bed.

We’re in Texas, 30 miles north of Dallas in a high, quiet room at the Omni Frisco Hotel, having minutes earlier dropped our bags on the floor and plopped on our beds after a 4-hour flight and 25-minute ride from DFW International Airport.

The city of Frisco is considered part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, which includes 11 counties that tend to run into each other. A travel tip shared with us soon after arrival is that if you’re ever confused about your location, just look up; whatever water tower you see, that’s where you are.

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♬ Happy by Pharrell Williams – Sped up songs

I wonder briefly if Felix is really trying to tell me that he wants to leave Frisco and head back to New York. This is only the second of two father-son trips — sans mom and sisters — in his life. The first one we took three years ago to the Finger Lakes was successful, or so I thought until he burst into tears at the Rochester airport because I was spending too much time on my phone and evidently had been the entire trip.

“I need to take notes and pictures on my phone for work, you know this,” I explained at the time, and as often happens — at least with my parenting –I twisted his sadness towards me into anger towards him because I didn’t feel he appreciated that I had to split my attention between him and my work. We calmed down soon after we hugged it out, but the argument left a mark on the trip and on both of us.

I didn’t want to reprise the Rochester airport outburst in Frisco, nor did I want the two of us complacently retreating into our own phones as our family too often does after work and school.

This trip would be different, or at least I hoped. And spoiler alert, it was.

But for now, my worry that Felix might want to drive for 22 hours back to New York was dispelled seconds later when he looked up at the wall and said “that’s a 55-inch TV.”

“How do you know? I ask

“I saw it on the hotel website,” he says. That he has memorized some of our room specs is a good sign that he’s been anticipating this trip. Though during our time in Frisco, we never put on the TV. Except for a few episodes of “Family Guy,” because my wife doesn’t like the show, and she’s not here.

Those pockets of time in our room, resting up in between the other fun things we did, were among our favorite father-son moments, and there were several as we made our way around Frisco, accompanied much of the time by Wesley Lucas of Visit Frisco, who invited me and Felix here and generously gave up much of her weekend with her own family to shepherd us around town.

While Visit Frisco hosted us during our stay, my opinions about what we saw and did are my own.

Frisco is a nice place to visit and people want to live here

After investigating every corner and amenity in the room we head down to Neighborhood Services, a restaurant tucked inside the Omni Frisco Hotel’s lobby. I have huevos rancheros, surprisingly light even with its luscious layer of chorizo. Felix, a flexitarian, which for him means he doesn’t eat meat except when he feels like it, tackles most of a “straight up sandwich,” a brioche with a fried egg and cheese as well as bacon and ham, because really, you shouldn’t ever have to choose between those two things.

Wesley picks us up and it’ll be one of the few times Felix lets me ride shotgun, because he seldom gets the passenger seat, plus he hasn’t stopped talking since he was born, making him especially good company for grown-ups during car trips. During our first few minutes together Wesley’s love for her home state quickly starts to show, in part perhaps because she’s doing her job well, but she’s also a 7th-generation Texan. And something tells me you can’t fake a love of Texas if you’re that many generations deep.

I also learn that Wesley’s parents are cattle ranchers and that she’s the sixth great grandniece of James K. Polk, who through a prescient game of long ball must have really wanted me to come to Frisco, too: Polk’s notable bill signings while 11th President of the United States included annexing Texas as the 28th state of the Union.

From the Frisco fact sheet Wesley has supplied I also learn that the population of Frisco more than quintupled between 1990 and 2000 and more than tripled between 2000 and 2010. Many residents have migrated north from Dallas. And Frisco is also something of a playground for locals: 85% of the city’s visitation is comprised of day-trippers. So evidently Frisco is a nice place to visit and perhaps you would want to live here.

Frisco is a gateway to video games and queso

During two getaways to the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, one of which was during the aforementioned father-son trip, I got a chill when I saw how the museum curators reverently placed video game consoles behind panes of glass, cherishing them as historical artifacts, though not ancient ones, I would suggest, as many of these gaming systems are part of my childhood.

I got that same little chill in Frisco when Wesley let us loose in the National Videogame Museum, which despite packing in many thousands of samples of video game memorabilia and hardware and software is a spartan and clean industrial space, and not sticky, cluttered, and dark, which perhaps would have been a too-on-the-nose homage to gamers, myself included.

The museum is organized by stages that helpfully reinforce the timeline of gaming evolution. And as easy as it would be to work your way through here sequentially, the fact-covered walls and displays and shelves — happily groaning with consoles, monitors, gaming cartridges, and circuit boards — lend themselves to wandering as you’re distracted by literally the next shiny new object wherever you turn.

Amid the displays are interactive elements like the world’s largest Pong console and a long table of home computers throughout history. Felix tries out some of the console games that made their mark way before his time, but whose gameplay and characters, he quickly appreciated, paved the way for the games we have played throughout his young life on Playstation, Xbox, Wii, Nintendo Switch and our phones. And despite our mutual pledge to limit our phone time our cameras are out all the time in this place because it’s both a gamer’s shrine and buffet.

And my expectations for gaming and darkness — minus the stickiness and most of the clutter — are rewarded when we stumble back in time into a replicated 80s arcade. While Felix is seeing these massive cabinets with monitors and joysticks for the first time, I momentarily return to my childhood to see if after knocking out Glass Joe and Piston Hurricane in “Punch Out” I can put down Bald Bull, which Past Paul was only able to do once — Present Paul succeeds once more.

And I take several turns relishing “Star Wars,” whose graphics resemble nothing more than bright little staples that take the form of tie fighters and the contours of the Death Star, but oh how exciting when those bright staples blow apart on screen, graphically a masterpiece in the 80’s and a simple pleasure now, but no less thrilling. Can you feel me, fellow nerds?

The National Videogame Museum is the big dog within the Frisco Discovery Center, also home to TrainTopia, a Museum of the American Railroad exhibit worth a walk-through to see the six G-scale trains locomoting around 2,500 square feet of landscapes and tiny cars and people; and the Sci-Tech Discovery Center, whose exhibits and displays include cars you can construct and propel along a track with bursts of air and an enormous nose that periodically sneezes.

Afterwards we nibble on mac and cheese balls and steak bites at Nerdvana, a craft bar where you can play videogames or old school board games from the comfort of your table. Not incidentally the eatery was launched by Kristy Pitchford, wife of Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox, on whose ground floor Nerdvana is nestled.

As Felix eats like the 13-year-old boy that he is and I eat like the Traveling Dad that I am, we seldom simply nibble on anything, but the fact is we’re saving room for La Hacienda Ranch, where Felix fully flexes his flexitarianism by having a steak and I do the same. Making our sizzling plates a little extra and a lot Tex Mex is the little pat of ancho butter melting on the filet, atop rice and beans and for good measure a little enchilada, as if to say, you know you wanted to try me, so here I am.

An important fact is that in 1971, La Hacienda founder Mariano Martinez invented the frozen margarita machine. As a salute to this great man I should be having a margarita but instead I spoon queso on top of my steak, rice, beans, and enchilada because Wesley, who is so into queso she has blogged about it, has suggested to me that “queso is life,” and she’s right.

Ode to the Waffle at the Omni Frisco Hotel

Our room at the Omni Frisco is on a high floor and evidently very quiet because we’ve slept for more than 10 hours. I wake up Felix and point this out to him.“We should just move to this hotel room,” he says, and he knows I get his meaning. Seldom is there a morning when our New York City neighbors don’t wake us up. I also didn’t wake once in the night with a feeling of existential dread, which is perhaps luck, or maybe it’s just knowing breakfast is coming.

We tuck into the Neighborhood Services buffet ($18.85) with the requisite eggs, crispy bacon, sausage, breakfast potatoes, and pastries. There’s also a tray with waffles, which I bypass, but Felix tries one and insists I taste his.

And then I return to the buffet and get my own waffle.

It has a certain gooey chewiness, but not from being undercooked. It’s more of a magical, pliable sweetness. I flag down our waiter by name — something my dad used to do in restaurants, I think just to embarrass me, because when servers tell you their names are you really supposed to use them? Discuss. Felix doesn’t seem to mind, though, and I say to Justin, “Justin, why is this waffle so good?” And the dude has started to smile before I even finish the question. He says he tries the waffles at every opportunity and believes that there are sugar crystals in the batter, but isn’t certain. When Justin leaves and I say “sugar crystals?” and Felix says “I don’t think he’s actually allowed to tell you.”

Wesley picks us up and we motor over to the Stonebriar Centre and its outpost of KidZania, that despite being in Frisco is dubbed KidZania Dallas. It won’t be the first time we need to reconcile that things called Dallas are in Frisco.

Role Playing in Frisco at KidZania Dallas

There are several possible elevator pitches that would describe KidZania. It’s an indoor mini-city where kids can role-play different jobs and earn money for them. Or, it’s a safe haven that “lets kids be kids in an adult world,” as Wesley put it. Or, being as its multi-aisle thoroughfares resemble the stores within a mall, one could call it a mall within a mall. It’s all of these things.

We head up the escalator where the nose of an airplane quickly comes into view, perched above what looks a lot like airport check-in desks. All the KidZanzias — there are 28, this being the first North American location, with more U.S. outposts reportedly coming to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles — have this exterior and we check in, passing through “airport security” into KidZania proper.

And when you first set foot in here it really does look like you’ve entered another part of the mall, except there’s an almost “Truman Show”-esque pristine innocence to it, including a blue sky that hovers over the rows of boutiques and businesses.

KidZania is billed as an experience for kids 6 to 14, which had both me and Felix wondering if at 13 he would find KidZania to be too babyish or at best, a 20-minute walk-through. That concern was muted about a minute into our visit when an energetic young woman — one of the KidZania facilitators, known as “Zupervisors” — approached Felix and asked him if he wanted to be part of a news team. Sure, he said, and he was hustled down an aisle past a few storefronts to WFAA 8 ABC – a real ABC affiliate and one of several corporate sponsors who pay to have a presence here.

Zupervisors are the only grown-ups permitted inside the individual role-playing areas with the kids, so from outside the TV station I see Felix suddenly appear on a large monitor. He’s wearing a gray blazer and is sitting behind a news desk beside another boy, presumably his co-anchor. From where I sit I see a guy in a glass-walled, dark control room playing with the set’s background colors, which I see changing behind Felix and his co-anchor as the zupervising director chats with them about what’s to come.

Another Zupervisor emerges from the studio and invites me and the other parents and guardians in to watch the newscast, showing us to benches that are technically within the same space as the kids but also deliberately separate; once the newscast is over, grown-ups will exit separately from the sitting area and be reunited with their kids outside. I like the fact that this rule is enforced.

Felix and his co-anchor run through the day’s news, including that “there’s a fire at the match factory,” which is a nice call-out to the fact that a few KidZania “blocks” away there is indeed a match factory, where uniform-clad boys and girls are diligently putting out the fire. Wesley observes that there are no gender boundaries at KidZania, suggesting that a girl can become a firefighter as easily as a boy can wander into a salon and be trained as a nail technician, which Felix actually ended up doing.

While KidZania is a circumscribed area, it can be all too easy to lose track of your kids, which is why grown-ups and kids are issued RFID bracelets that the staff can track. And eventually KidZania will introduce an app you can use to track your kids yourself. To underscore this point, I lose track of Felix twice while we are here. I jog a quick lap around the perimeter, trying not to look too crazy eyed and know that if I just focus I’ll find him, which I do. This technique has worked for all three of my kids over the years. There’s nothing quite like responsible parenting by running around, folks.

When I find Felix after one of the times I’ve lost him I learn that he has stopped into KidZania’s employment office, Jobz, to be matched for a job, so we proceed to the KidZania hospital.

Is there a doctor in the house?

We head to the entrance of the KidZania ER, where a “doctor” in blue scrubs emerges and asks if I am with him. Yes, I say. She asks me if I want to be a burn victim. Or course, I say.

The doctor pulls out a pen and makes a thick red mark on my hand. It looks like the kind of ink that will never come off. But I decide just to roll with the role playing and worry about the ink later. The good doctor directs me to go sit in front of Mooyah, which is a couple “blocks” down and around the corner. She says my wait will be about seven minutes.

I obey and sure enough, after sitting at a cafe table for seven minutes I hear an ambulance siren, which doesn’t actually register right away because a) I’ve already heard it several times since I’ve been here and b) I grew up in New York City and sometimes don’t respond to high-decibel noises at all.

But I do look up and realize that the doctor who hired Felix and drew on my hand is driving the ambulance, with Felix in the back.

The ambulance pulls up to what I now notice is a car lightly crumpled around a pole and finally I start to get it: I am a victim of this car crash, and a medical team is now on the scene to treat me. Felix and his doctor mentor, both of them now wearing the blue scrubs, approach me.

I say to Felix, “Are you sure you went to medical school?” and his mentor immediately responds “Yes, he is fully trained.” Dead serious. She then prompts Felix a little bit about what to do next, building on the training session she had evidently been running him through while I was waiting. Felix consults a laminated paper to ascertain how bad my burn is and then takes out a bandage to dress it.

“You look a little young to be a doctor,” I say, still trying to get a smile out of either him or his mentor.

“Yes, we go right to work,” she says. No luck on the smile from either of them. Felix is pretty intent on wrapping my burn. When he’s done, his mentor instructs me to meet them back at the ER entrance where we started and she whisks him away in the ambulance.

A few minutes later I pick up Felix, who’s back in his street clothes and richer by 10 “KidZos.” A KidZo is the currency kids can use to buy prizes in the KidZania gift shop — a tickets-for-trinkets transaction not unlike the process at Dave & Busters and Chuck E. Cheese, though here you work hard for the fake money, which you can load onto a plastic card and save for another visit if you like.

Despite there being no gender boundaries at KidZania, the pay scale is all too real: Felix earned 10 KidZos apiece as a news anchor, burn specialist and later on as a pilot-in-training — the reclaimed airplane husks that grace the fronts of all the KidZanias have flight simulator terminals inside — but he only got $8 for his stint as a nail technician, which at least from where I was sitting looked to be far more labor intensive than news anchoring, fake-burn wrapping, and simulated flying. But who am I to question the KidZania economy?

After nearly three hours here Felix has earned a shade under 100 KidZos, which not shockingly — per my references to Dave, Buster, and Chuck E. — are barely enough to cover the lowest-end prize. When I ask the shop attendant if I can supplement Felix’s KidZos with cash or buy additional KidZos to give him she says, “No, KidZos have to be earned.”

Lured by the desire to earn more KidZos, Felix felt he probably could have spent more time here. But we have more to do today.

No escape, and that’s just fine

We head over to Countdown 2 Escape and attempt to bust out of a Zanzibar-themed room outfitted as a beautifully-rendered tented camp. Since in addition to being a travel writer I also write for a safari company, I can’t help showing off my knowledge of Africa, which I share out loud randomly to impress Felix as well as the woman outside the room who monitors our progress and constantly has to give us clues.

We fail to escape the room, but as we’re leaving Felix suggests that while in the room I did all the “thinking stuff” while he did the “fun stuff,” though I tell him he’s selling himself short, because soon after we got into the room he looked at a photo on the wall and knew immediately how it tied in to the combination on the lock fastening the box below it. I want to say this illustrates how sometimes as adults we overthink the solutions to puzzles while our kids are able to see things more quickly and easily. But put another way, I think the kid is just smarter than I am, and that’s just fine.

I’m pretty sure I signed a document at the escape place that made me promise not to reveal any of the room’s secrets or take photos, so here’s a nice shot from outside the building, where a local artist kindly crafted this made-for-social-media mural.

Mario Kart in Real Life

We head next to Kartland Indoor Performance Raceway, an indoor track inhabiting about 50,000 square feet. After watching a short no-nonsense video we’re outfitted with little do-rags and helmets and assigned cars.

Felix takes the car behind me and after we’re belted in I am thoroughly jolted as he rams into me. “This isn’t Mario Kart, mother–” I say inside my helmet and I try to turn my head and give him a look but my helmet as well as my kart harness are as constricting as you’d expect and that’s a good thing.

I pull out onto the track and for the first few laps I’m cruising ahead of Felix, but I know it’s just a matter of time, because I don’t really drive much in real life and as I’ve begun to establish, Felix is smarter and a faster learner than I am.

As I’m coming out of a turn, pumping the breaks in a tentative herky-jerky way, Felix glides past me as we pass through a wide-mouthed turn, and he remains ahead during the remainder of our laps.

After we park, Felix asks if I let him pass me and I assure him I did not, while he assures me that he didn’t ram me on purpose earlier. Given his love of Mario Kart across all gaming platforms as well as the freedom here to push your electric kart up to a speed of 45 mph, I’m pretty certain this was Felix’s favorite activity in Frisco, also because he told me it was.

What Does a Yankee Know About Being Texan?

After the indoor karting Wesley and I chat some more and she makes the offhand comment that Frisco is not “super Texan,” and as she’s the daughter of a cattle rancher, which sounds super Texan, I begin to understand the frame of reference I sense she’s trying to give me.

But it also gets me thinking, what can a Yankee ever know about being a Texan? And as if in answer to my question, Wesley asks if I want to see the remains of a ranch house — the Brinkmann, formerly Cloyce Box Ranch — destroyed by fire in the 1980s, which served as the original Southfork in the first few episodes of the original “Dallas” TV series. That is until the producers were asked to move, and would go on to film at a different Texas ranch.

And yes, I sure did want to see it.

I only get a brief glimpse of the former ranch as we pass it. But there’s even more nostalgia in this moment than when I was playing old-timey arcade games the day before. Southfork, in its ranch incarnations real and imagined, feels super Texan to me because the original “Dallas” was for me and many others of my generation what it meant to be from Texas. It made us want to be Texans, or at least be the Ewings — sometimes the good Ewings, sometimes the bad ones. I used to fantasize about stumbling down the steps of Ewing Manor and sauntering bleary eyed into breakfast, where a pitcher of Bloody Marys and platter of crispy bacon awaited, Miss Ellie giving me that exasperated but kind look she reserved for her rascal sons.

We all have different dreams.

And when my thoughts wander to pork I know I must be hungry. Coincidentally it’s time to get our BBQ on at Tender Smokehouse, which I hope we can all agree is super Texan.

We order, well, everything.

The brisket is fatty and tender and also crispy, with that pit-mastered bark on the edges I’ve watched for decades on Food Network but never experienced until now. I sample a bit of sausage that someone had the good sense to stuff with both cheese and jalapeño, which strikes me as the perfect food to serve at a New Year’s Eve party. And then I try the barbecue beans with bits of brisket mixed in and decide that in addition to being my favorite bite of the trip this easily could be my desert island food.

The Star in Frisco Has Lured the Dallas Cowboys

In 2016 the about as-super-Texan-as-you-can-get Dallas Cowboys began using the 91-acres of The Star in Frisco as its world headquarters and practice facility. It’s anchored by the Ford Center, which accommodates the Cowboys for their indoor practices and hosts sporting events and concerts.

From our hotel window we can see the Ford’s artificial-turfed plaza, which Felix and I will criss-cross frequently during our stay, and every time we do we see kids throwing a football around, their parents feverishly clicking photos of them with the Cowboys-logoed end zone in the background.

The Cowboys practice and train inside the Ford Center as well as out, on two fields — one with real grass, one with artificial turf — so that the team can practice on the same kind of surface they plan to play on next. I’m neither a sports writer or a sports fan, so this is the first time I’m hearing a training factoid like this, and I’m fascinated.

 

Likewise later on, when Felix and I are led on a group tour of The Star, we come to understand that you don’t have to be a sports fan to appreciate sports culture. More specifically, the Cowboys culture and ethos yielded interesting and teachable moments, largely because we had an amazing tour guide whose love of the Cowboys, like Wesley’s love of Texas, could not be doubted.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The Star tour begins alongside a wall displaying 59 years of Dallas Cowboys history and its with almost bubbling urgency that we’re made to understand exactly what it took for the Cowboys to achieve those eight Super Bowl wins. We’re shown into a large conference room that’s nice but still, feels pretty much like a conventional conference room, until our guide describes it as “the most powerful room in the building,” because this is where draft picks are decided. Well, that’s different, and that simple statement transforms how we feel while we’re standing in that room. That’s what a good tour guide does.

As we leave the building’s most powerful room, our guide mentions casually that being drafted for the team doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to make the cut, and that comment ends up serving as a nice underlying theme, for the kids on the tour especially, that you may get your shot, but you also have to, you know, work to keep it.

This idea is reinforced as we pass through hallways, stairwells, the cafeteria, really everywhere, where on probably not-so-randomly placed monitors and walls are empowering words like “We must establish our identity in everything we do” and “Be who we are,” as well as the more succinct “Fight” and spelled out in large bold letters in one hallway, “RESPECT,” leaving no doubt what principles you need to embody if you want to be part of the Cowboys Nation.

While the Cowboys absorb a lot of the attention in this part of Texas, minor league baseball fans might wish to take note that about six minutes south of the Ford Center you can watch the Frisco RoughRiders play their home games at Dr Pepper Ballpark, which above its right-field wall runs — get this — a lazy river. In a ballpark.

Indoor Skydiving at iFly

After breakfast, by design not a very heavy one, we head over to iFly Dallas, which like KidZania Dallas and the Dallas Cowboys world headquarters is not at all confusingly in Frisco. Upon arrival, we get a pretty good snapshot of what’s about to happen: Inside a large clear chamber we see a jumpsuited person, who turns out to be an instructor, gently guiding another jumpsuited person into the chamber, where gusts of air from large fans above and below suspend both of them in the air.

But before Felix and I get our turn with some other fliers in the chamber we’re outfitted with our own jumpsuits, which we slip on over our street clothes. You can also keep your street shoes on, but since I’m trying to be Texan by wearing boots I’m supplied with a pair of sneakers to wear, along with goggles and a helmet. We’re pulled into a room where video and live instructions focus on how to arch your body and hold your arms and legs so that you can fly as high and as smoothly as possible. Afterwards Felix and I and two other families are escorted to the outer ring of the chamber, where we arrange ourselves on a bench and wait our turn.

Felix and I are seated at the end of the row, so we have the benefit of watching all the other fliers go before us. This makes the anticipation a bit more nerve wracking but it’s useful to see how the instructor is correcting some of the fliers, both through hand signals and in a hands-on way. In one case the instructor encourages one flier to keep her back straighter and cautions another not to bend his legs so much. Meanwhile a staffer outside the chamber, signaling the instructor inside, adjusts the fan speed throughout the flights, taking into account, among other things, I gather, the body type of each flier as well as how high they want to fly.

How to Fly

For the most part the grown-ups and kids who go before us appear to enjoy their flights, but one of the younger kids who enters the chamber decides pretty early into her flight that she doesn’t like it, and after briefly trying to encourage her to stick with it, the instructor gently guides her back out to her parents in the outer chamber. Something similar happens with a boy a few turns later. I suspect these kids found the chamber to be too noisy — you’re warned about the roar of the fans beforehand, hence the need to obey hand signals.

And Felix and I discover upon our initial flights — we’ll each do two — that the fans not only make the chamber loud, but that the wind can also make it challenging to breathe normally. The gusts of air from the fans place a fair amount of pressure on your face, even inside your helmet, so small, shallow breaths are the way to go, and if you want to enjoy your flight it helps to quickly get used to that.

During my first flight, my instructor gets me comfortable with my body positioning and the feeling of, well, flying. During the second flight, when the fans are cranked up to ludicrous speed, my instructor and I are propelled even higher into the chamber.

Perhaps because Felix and I got to learn from watching the fliers before us, we manage to hold our bodies in optimal ways inside the chamber so that our flights are smooth and lofty.

One thought that crosses my mind during my flights is that I never see Superman bending his legs back, so I try to keep them straight in back of me. During my second flight I also rock my arms left and right a little bit like I’ve seen cinematic Supermans do when they’re fighting wind shear. This rocking has absolutely no practical application here and actually throws off my balance a little, but it is during these few moments — when I’m not focused on the noise of the fans or gusts of air or people outside the chamber possibly judging how I’m holding my body — that I am flying. And it feels pretty great.

Three Words: Chuck Norris Gravy

Afterwards we have lunch at Mash’d, where Felix and I tuck into some chicken and biscuits and an order of chicken fried pepperoni, which is as good as it sounds. Both dishes are accompanied by Chuck Norris gravy, which is less gravy and more peppery dipping sauce. Either way any condiment named after Chuck Norris seems pretty super Texan to me.

Afterwards we return to our room, where we’ve been granted a late check out. I had packed up our bags earlier, so there’s nothing to do up here at this point but relish the silence.

Despite having taken hundreds of photos during our time in Frisco I’ve limited my note taking to my notebook and have refrained from mindlessly checking my phone at every opportunity. And for the most part Felix has been mirroring my restrained phone use, though there are moments like now when we’re sprawled on our beds, not with Felix forlornly looking at me looking at my phone, but me adding photos to my Frisco Instagram story and Felix likely looking at TikTok.

And we were both fine with that.

Some getaways take you out of your comfort zone, but Frisco has firmly put us into ours. Where we can drive and fly and try to escape rooms and eat everything in sight and role play in a perfect world, or be our imperfect selves while perfecting the art of doing nothing, which as father and son we’ve become pretty good at doing together.

Visiting Frisco Texas during the Spring? Here’s Where to Find Texas Bluebonnets

Although bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas, bloom everywhere across the state, one of the best places to find them is the Texas Hill Country. You will be able to find Bluebonnets in and around nearby Dallas, Fort Worth, and Decatur as well as near lakes, fields or parks throughout Texas.

Bluebonnets bloom from late March to early April (varies depending on how cold the winter was). More on where to find bluebonnets here.