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Over Manassas City Public Schools’ 2026 Spring Break, I traveled to Texas with my mom. We flew out on Sunday to Austin, the capital of the Lone Star State, where my grandparents live. I stayed there for 2 full days, Monday and Tuesday, to hang out with my grandparents. I also acquired a car over this journey, one of my grandparents’ old cars, which they gifted to me. On Wednesday, my mom and I started our drive back to Virginia in the new car. We traveled for 3 days, until we arrived home late Friday night. Here is everything I did over this adventure, traveling through Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, and finally, ending back up in Virginia.

Sunday, March 29

This day was the most boring out of all of them. We left early in the morning, and my dad drove us to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The flight was really short, uneventful, and we had a layover. The layover was boring.

Once we arrived at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, my grandparents were waiting there to pick us up. They drove us to a nearby restaurant, where they know the owners. My grandma also has some of her paintings hanging on the wall there. I had tacos, they were pretty tasty and unique. After this, we headed back to my grandparents’ house for the night. I slept in the back house, which has its own kitchen, bathroom, living room, and restroom.

Monday, March 30

On this day, my grandparents, mom, and I went to the coffee house walking distance from their house, Epoch Coffee. I ordered a hot chocolate, and it was very good. After this, we started the process of getting my grandmother’s car transferred into my mom’s name. The first part was to get some documents notarized at the bank. This trip was boring, but it did have a safe with one of those big vault wheels that you see in movies sometimes.

Later in the day, my uncle came into town from Houston, and we went to a Mexican restaurant, Fonda San Miguel. The food was very superior, it was authentic Mexican food, not Tex-Mex, which is still very lovely most of the time. After we stepped out of the restaurant, I saw a self-driving car, Waymo, up close. The car’s steering wheel was turning by itself with nobody in the driver’s seat. This was very weird to see, as it’s not common to see a car with no human driver. It was almost a little disturbing. Overall, this was a great day.

Tuesday, March 31

On Tuesday, we first started out by going back to Epoch for another drink. I then drove the new car to CVS to get a connector cord so I could hook my phone up to the car. After this, I drove to Toy Joy, which is a huge toy store with a wide variety of interesting stuff. This shop was very fun to be inside, almost everything looked cool and fun. The only negative to this store is how overpriced everything was. One blind bag was around $15-$17. The lower-priced things were very small, probably a little bigger than a bug. In the afternoon, all of us drove to the countryside to do an olive oil tasting. I didn’t really enjoy this; the olive oils were spicy and too strong. I did like the scenery, and I had a pizza for lunch there, but other than that, I was kind of bored at this place.

In the evening, my mom, grandparents, and I all went to see Project Hail Mary in the movie theater. It was a very interesting movie. I didn’t really expect to like it, as I don’t really enjoy science as a subject most of the time. Even if you don’t understand the science they talk about in it, you can still understand and enjoy the movie. It had a great plot, great characters, and great scenery. Space is very interesting. I enjoyed the friendship Ryan Gosling’s character, Ryland, made with Rocky. I would give it a 9.5/10.

Wednesday, April 1

April Fools’ Day, yet there were no pranks. On this day, my mom and I started our trip back to Virginia. We left early in the morning and stopped in Dallas around lunchtime. We went to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which is located in the building from which John F. Kennedy was shot. It was really cool, you could actually see where Lee Harvey Oswald hid when he shot Kennedy. The museum was interesting. It described Kennedy’s life, political career, assassination, and the aftermath of the assassination. The museum also had a gift shop, where I got a Kennedy-Johnson 1960 campaign postcard for around $2.

After we were done in the museum, we drove all the way to Arkansas. We stopped in a small town for dinner. The best place we could find was this shady little Mexican restaurant, and when we went inside, the furniture was very tacky, but it had delicious food. I was scared I was going to get food poisoning or something because of how shady this restaurant was, and it being in a very small town made it worse, but I ended up okay. We stopped a little while after this for the night, and we stayed in a hotel in Arkansas.

Thursday, April 2

This day started out with us getting some food from the hotel breakfast area. It was pretty standard hotel breakfast food. I can’t remember what I had, but it was a decent amount of food. After this, we drove to Memphis, had lunch at a local restaurant, and explored the shops in the area. They were pretty basic shops; a lot of them were music-related, which was cool. There was even an old-fashioned ice cream parlor in the area, so we got some ice cream from that.

A little while after this, we headed over to the National Civil Rights Museum, built where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was interesting to see. The whole museum was about the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, but it also had a little bit on the history of slavery in the United States. As you traveled throughout the museum, you eventually ended up in the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination part, and you could actually see inside the room he was staying in right before he was shot. Overall, I loved this museum; it was very informative about the movement. At the end of the day, we started heading to the hotel near Knoxville for the night, when the car started saying one of the tires had low pressure. We put air into it at a gas station located in Nashville, but we were still pretty worried about it, as it kept saying different things. We stopped near Knoxville in a hotel for the night.

Friday, April 3

The final day, yet the most disastrous one. When we woke up in the morning, my mom decided to check the tire to see how it was. I got a call later, and she told me it was completely flat. So we changed the tire using a tutorial, and she drove it to the shop. It was around $40 to patch the tire, as it didn’t need to be completely replaced. We drove home after this. We went through Tennessee and ended back up in Virginia. This day was largely uneventful, and we ended up back in Virginia around 10 P.M. The most interesting thing we did this day was probably going to Hardee’s for lunch.

Overall, this trip was very fun. I loved seeing my grandparents, uncle, and traveling to new states. I had been to Tennessee when I was a little kid, but I had never been to Arkansas before this trip. Arkansas was largely an uneventful place, but it was still cool to be in a new state. Even though the drive in total was almost a day long, it didn’t feel very long due to breaking it up over 3 days. The drive had lots of beautiful scenery and interesting stops. I would definitely drive from Texas to Virginia again.