Festivities on December 28, our wedding anniversary, almost didn’t happen. We’d hoped to have a celebration for our 11th anniversary, seeing as how the day of the week had swung around to where it was when we married. The previous Friday, though, the norovirus striking half of Dallas got us as well, leaving us barely able to move except to clear out our GI tracts just a little bit more. Saturday, though, we were just mobile enough to get in the car and go to Dallas’s Fair Park, where it all began.
Unlike 11 years ago, we couldn’t go to the exact spot where we married, as it’s no longer accessible to the public. The Dallas Museum of Natural History is no more, its collections mostly moved to the new Perot Museum, and the former Texas Giants Hall now turned into administration offices. We still had reason to come out that way, because the grounds of the old museum and Leonhardt Lagoon were hosting the Chinese Lantern Festival for another winter.
As with the show in 2012, this year’s Chinese Lantern Festival was extended past the run of the State Fair of Texas. Unlike last year, it’s now running all the way through the end of the Chinese New Year. Also unlike last year, the Lantern Festival does a much better job of utilizing the area around Leonhardt Lagoon, to a much improved effect. For the next two hours, we ignored the last twitches of the norovirus, completely engrossed by the view.
Over the next few days, keep checking back for photos of the Lantern Festival, but if you have the opportunity to do so, visit it directly. The images are, as with many things inadequate compared to the actual experience.
More to follow…
Did you find the secret hidden door into the Porcelain Pagoda?
Nope: I hadn’t heard about it until now. At the very least, I noticed that this year’s Pagoda had been redesigned so it didn’t encourage people to walk on its steps out front.
Oh, wow. Maybe one year we can make it….it would be worth braving Northern Hemisphere cold for this.