We left Roswell, NM, early on Friday morning, August 27, 2010, headed for Dallas, TX. Here are the stats:
Depart Roswell, NM, Aug 27 at 8:10 a.m.
Arrive Dallas, TX, Aug 27 at 7:20 p.m.
Actual driving time of 8 hours 32 minutes
486 miles at 56 mph average
Attending OpenCamp Dallas 2010 was really the original reason for the trip. OpenCamp was the first conference dedicated to the three (major?) blogging platforms: WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. By the time it was finished, a .Net track and a Multimedia track had been added as well.
I was primarily interested in the WordPress talks, but also wanted to get some exposure to Drupal and Joomla. I learned a lot, met some of the folks I’ve seen on some of the popular tech video podcasts, and met some folks in the WordPress community. It was a great conference; perhaps there will be something similar in the coming years that is closer to Maryland’s beautiful Eastern Shore.
The conference began on Friday evening, Aug 27, and ended on Sunday, Aug 29. We stayed in Dallas until Tuesday morning (no need beginning a 660 mile 10+ hour trip after 6 p.m.) And, yes, we could have left on Monday morning, but there were a couple of things near Dallas that we wanted to see: Southfork Ranch, in Parker, TX, and the Dallas Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington, TX. Actually, we really only wanted to see Southfork, or at least that all I really wanted to see. I was a huge fan of the show Dallas, and saw every episode, so visiting and touring Southfork was a no-brainer given that we don’t know when we’ll be back near here.
We also visited the Cowboys stadium to pick up a couple of things for our son-in-law Ryan Simms, his daughter Taylor, and his soon-to-be son Logan (Ryan, and by association Lauren (his wife, and Nancy’s daughter), Taylor, and Logan are all huge Dallas Cowboys fans).