Who is the man immortalized in this statue on Baltimore’s Mount Vernon square? I see this statue often, so I wondered: just who is Severn Teackle Wallis?

Happy Birthday to George Washington. The “Father of Our Country” was born February 22, 1732.

There are lots of places with connections to George Washington, so you know we’ve encountered him on a Nerd Trip or two!

Now for a look inside Southfork, a real house that’s been redecorated in the spirit of the TV show “Dallas,” with rooms dedicated to several of the characters. The decor, however, fits the specific year 1970 when the real house was built. The show debuted in 1978 and ran until 1991. Just go with it.

As someone who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, I couldn’t go to Dallas without a trip to Southfork, home to TV’s Ewing family!

Several people warned me that I would be disappointed. “It’s much smaller than it looks on TV” and “It’s not what you’ll want to see,” they cautioned. But just like my appreciation for the show “Dallas,” I embraced the cheesiness, campiness and slight ridiculousness that is the Southfork Ranch!

While in Dallas, we visited another Kennedy-related location – John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza, which is very close to Dealey Plaza. It’s hard to miss because it’s a large monument in the middle of downtown Dallas.
According to the postcard I picked up at the Sixth Floor Museum, “renowned American architect Philip Johnson designed this ‘cenotaph'(open tomb) to symbolize the freedom of Kennedy’s spirit.”

One area intriguing area of the Sixth Floor Museum was the so-called “sniper’s nest,” a term I find to be aptly descriptive. These two simple words really capture the scene of boxes set up like a perch for a gunman who is waiting from above.

“It’s just so close!” my mother said regarding the Texas School Book Depository, the building where Lee Harvey Oswald shot out of a sixth floor window at President Kennedy’s motorcade. That was my reaction too when we visited the building, now the Sixth Floor Museum. I was shocked to see how close it is to where the motorcade was. I pictured Dealey Plaza to be much, much bigger!