Road Trip to College Station and Waco

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Recently our family took a road trip to College Station. One of the days we took a day trip to Waco, and it is now one of our best family road trips to date!!! I wanted to share in case you were trying to looking for ideas of place to travel in Texas!

Road Trip

College Station

We went to College Station because my son was attending a soccer camp at A&M, and now I can not wait to go back next year! As a college town, I was not expecting there to be much to do or many things that my kids would be interested in since they are younger but I was pleasantly surprised at the diversity all over town. I even packed a whole bag of crafts because I figured we would be totally bored, to my surprise we didn’t touch my craft bag even once!

One of the best things for me was the FOOD!! There are a ton of great options in town, and when we travel we LOVE to eat at local places that you can not find at home.

I am totally missing their food now that we are home!

Dixie Chicken: The first night we decided to head to the little downtown area they call Northgate. Where there is a little Texas Bar called Dixie Chicken, and it was SO GOOD! They don’t have a wide variety menu, but they had great burgers, and honestly, while we were there at dinner time on a Wednesday the crowd was mostly families. We sat on their little porch area and it was really nice. They also have right next to them what they call Bottle Cap Alley, which is a great photo op for those searching for an Instagram-worthy shot.

Laynes Chicken: Our second day for lunch we went to the original location of Layne’s Chicken. The food was great, but my favorite part was the funky atmosphere. They had years worth of drawings and notes that people had made and put all over the wall. We didn’t leave anything, and I regret that now. I can’t wait to go back next year and leave our mark on the wall.

Sodolaks Beefmasters Restaurant: Ok, this one is my favorite. It was so good we actually ate here twice! Not only was the food AMAZING, but it was also super low priced! They have steakhouse foods, and we tried Chicken Fried Bacon, which was amazing!

Sweet Eugene’s Coffeehouse: If you have been around CBMC for any amount of time you know we LOVE local coffeehouses, and it is true for my family when we travel. There were a bunch of local places I wanted to visit, but only had time to visit this one. And it was worth the trip! The treats were yummy, and I had a Red Velvet Latte that was SOOO GOOD! I could have sat in this coffeehouse for hours!

The other highlight of the trip was the number of parks and playgrounds all over town to choose from. We found one called Bee Creek Park, and that was the one we visited multiple times throughout our trip. Not only did this park have trails and a really great playground, but it had a great community pool with great slides and a kiddie pool area. This was great for us because we had promised the kids swimming and when we got to our hotel found that the pool was out of commission.

Another part of the trip was just driving around and finding all of the different sculptures and statues all over the A&M campus. I wish we could have stopped and taken pictures at all of them, but the kids would only tolerate so much of mom’s sightseeing. We were also on campus during the week and didn’t want to get in the way of people who were getting to and from classes. If our kids were older we would have rented one of the many bikes that were available to putter around the campus to sightsee!

Road Trip

WACO

So while my son was at camp, the rest of us took a day trip to Waco. When you think of Waco you probably think of Magnolia Market at the Silos, but there are so many other fun things to do in Waco! (If you are interested in my thoughts on Magnolia Market, this is a post from my visit there two years ago)

If you are planning a trip I highly suggest taking a look at our Sister Site in Waco for ideas of things to do!

For our day trip, we had two main goals: One, visit my husband’s hometown of West and get the world-famous Kolaches to bring home. And two visit the Zoo in Waco.

There are two places in West you can stop and get Kolaches, we always go to the Czech Stop because it is the original spot and it is the store my husband grew up visiting. Any time we are in this area we stop and get DOZENS of kolaches to bring home in a cooler. If you have a Texas bucket list I highly suggest making this one of your bucket list items! They have SO many yummy homemade foods, I get overwhelmed when we are in there picking things to bring home.

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Now for my favorite part……… the ZOO! We probably could have spent hours exploring Cameron Park, with the disc golf course, trails, and playgrounds. But our focus was the Cameron Park Zoo, and it is now my favorite Texas Zoo I have visited.

Road Trip

The day we went it was overcast and rainy so it was probably the first time I have ever gone to a Zoo in Texas in the summer and not been miserably hot. But I noticed that the majority of the zoo was shaded and probably would have been ok even if the sun had been out.

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The other cool thing I noticed were these air-conditioned Nursing pods, which I thought in the heat of summer would be a nice break for mom and baby.

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I could share so many different pictures of our time at the zoo, it was so fun and each animal enclosure felt close and intimate! This is another place you should put on your Texas bucket list!

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Where are you traveling this summer? Interested in other Road Trip ideas take a look at our other Road Trip Series posts here

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Jennifer
Jennifer is a Coastal Bend Native, born and raised in Ingleside. She began contributing to the Corpus Christi Moms Blog in 2018 and stepped up as the Community Engagement Coordinator in 2019. She is happiest when she is crafting, writing, or doing anything artistic. She loves music, especially ANYTHING from the 90's, and is often seen dancing around the kitchen to Nsync while cooking dinner. She is married to Derik and has two kids, Connor and Keeley (pronounced Key-Lee). Jennifer still feels like a novice when it comes to parenting and enjoys letting other moms know they are not doing life alone. She also admits she watches copious amounts of Netflix, but balances that out by reading to and with her kiddos as much as possible each day.