BoomerangExpo.com

What else is there to do in the area? Here are a few places of interest:

• The State Fair of Texas. The largest state fair in the country. The State Fair is also host to a group of fine museums.
• Kennedy Memorial and Sixth Floor Museum. The memorial is not where he was shot... the sixth Floor Museum is just beside the grassy knoll.
• Dallas World Aquarium. Large private aquarium with restaurant, downtown.
• Six Flags Over Texas. First location of the now ubiquitous chain.

For shopping, one of the premiere malls of the country, anchored by Neiman-Marcus, there is NorthPark Mall, North of that, there's the Galleria.  And our own small rodeo Drive at Preston Rd. and Mockingbird, in the trendy island communities of University Park and Highland Park, is Highland Park Village, just down the street from SMU.  NorthPark is closest but none are far, not more than about 10 miles.

For urban landscaping, there's White Rock Lake with the Dallas Arboretum.  This is our Central park... sort of :-) .  White Rock Lake is the scene of the White rock marathon with an approx. 9 mile jogging/riding trail circling the lake.  More info on the marathon at www.runtherock.com.

The tallest building in Dallas is what we call "the green building".  It is interesting to see at night because the frame is lined with argon filled tubes that can be seen for at least 20 miles and have the odd appearance of seeming a greater percentage of the building's frame as distance from the building increases. One other note of interest on the skyscraper; the argon tubes are only about an inch in diameter.

Reunion Tower is another distinct Dallas skyline landmark; part of the Hyatt Reunion complex (downtown), it's a lighted (with the lights programmed for constantly changing patterns) ball on a stick which is actually a restaurant and observation deck/bar.  Call before heading down as there's some construction underway.

Night Life

• Lower Greenville Ave. Bars and retaurants with some live blues.
• The West End. Downtown, more historic with clubs.
• Deep Ellum. Just east of downtown, funky with live music bars and more the tattoo crowd.

Nature Attractions

Here are a couple of locations to be thinking of nature wise not too far from Dallas: Turner Falls is about 100 miles north of Dallas and Dinosaur Valley State Park is about 75 miles SSW of Dallas:

From a nature stand point, one of the truly unique features of Texas is the Big Thicket. It's not real close to Dallas and encompasses a large area but it's fairly unusual as a nature preserve. I've been in parts of it where you can barely see 6 ft. in front of you (thus the name). I understand it's a good place for birding. At the bottom of their site they mention the Bald Eagle, at least.

Miscellaneous

• Here's a site with lots of info about Mesquite, TX: http://www.city-data.com/city/Mesquite-Texas.html