Living in Midland, Texas you learn real fast what it means to live in a bubble. This town, though it has grown a ton in the last 10 years, sadly doesn’t have much more then decent tacos to brag about. The scenery is dreary, it reeks of oil and gas, and you are in the middle of absolutely no where in particular.
I have lived all over the United States and I still cannot believe that I have settled for this long in a place like Midland, Texas. But you know the drill, I met a handsome man who has a great job down here and now I would rather be with him than anywhere else in the world. So, I have decided to, ‘Bloom where I am planted.’
A travel soul like mine has a hard time sitting still, so to cope with living in the middle of nowhere, I decided to explore. I may not be able to fly around the world every week, but I can certainly drive a couple hours to find something exciting to explore.
To my surprise West Texas has become something beautiful to me. It is a place that I have come to make many memories with my kids. We have laughed and explored all over this desert countryside and we have come to enjoy some of the small-town vibes we have discovered.
For the fellow stir-crazy traveler like me that is yearning to explore this amazing world, but finds themselves feeling stuck in desolate West Texas, I have created a list and several articles of day trips from Midland to get you out of town for the day and ignite the adventurous fire burning in your heart! These adventures may not be grand like Yosemite or Scotland, but they are close to home and offer just as amazing memories that your family will cherish forever.
Lets Start With Midland:
Now before we venture out of Midland, let me share what Midland has to offer. I moved to Midland many, many years ago; and back in those days Midland had very little to offer, but it has grown SO much. While I still feel the need to escape it every now and then, I have enjoyed exploring this growing oil town.
Outdoors in West Texas can be harsh, but I have enjoyed hiking Watersong Preserve to the sweet serenade of bullfrogs. My kids will testify that Midland has the best playgrounds in all of the West Texas towns, a few of our favorites are Lancaster Park with its castle theme, Trinity Park with its old west theme, Beal Park and its giant covered wagon playground, and of course the giant Dennis the Menace playgrounds.
For the intense, hot summer days you will find us slipping down the slides at both Doug Russell and Washington Park Aquatic centers. Both water parks offer large slides, lazy rivers, and splash pads for the littles.
Sometimes that heat hits a little too hard, so another escape we have found are the local museums. The Southwest Museum features changing art exhibits, while that isn’t super fun with kids, the connecting children’s museum and planetarium are. We have play Asian instruments, dug for dinosaur bones, and played in their play village many a time.
The Midland Air Hanger Museum is filled with history as well as incredible aircrafts. Speaking of aircrafts, Michael’s Charcoal Burgers is a restaurant filled with airplanes all around you. While the experience is cool enough, this unique local burger joint also serves burgers bigger than my head! That is a lot of food to eat, so if you are looking for smaller burgers, but incredible taste, Curbside Bistro is a local favorite. These sliders are SO good no wonder the owner won the TV Show Chopped!
As night comes, its time to kick back and enjoy the big screen! Midland has 3 movie theaters, each offering a unique and exciting activity. One Cinergy has arcades and ropes courses, while the other a large indoor go-kart track. If you are looking to escape the crowds and maybe just watch a movie the old-fashioned way, then park your truck at Big Sky Theaters for a traditional drive-in movie experience.
Midland may not be a town beaming with excitement, but we have found there is more to it than meets the eye, you just have to look a little harder. While I did mention some of the highlights of the area, be sure to click here for a complete list of what there is to do in Midland, Texas.
Within 1 Hour:
Big Spring (about 42 minutes away)
Texas has somewhere between 90-95 state parks and I love them! Each state park is unique and features a different side of Texas. While Big Spring isn’t exactly the prettiest town around, it has one of those 90 state parks that offers a unique feature of Texas. Surrounding this area is so flat, you could watch your dog run away for 3 days straight, but all the sudden you drive into Big Spring and they have a hill!
If you don’t live in Texas that is no big deal, but here in the flat desert side of Texas, you can bet seeing anything taller than you are is exciting. This hill is Big Spring State Park. It is decorated with cacti of all varieties, and at the top gives you a view of the entire town.
Some of our favorites to see in this town are the food, prairie dogs, airplanes, and murals. Let’s start with the food. If you are going to eat anywhere in town, hit up Big Jon’s Feed Lot. It may not look pretty from the outside, but this BBQ pit honoring John Wayne sure knows how to deep fry a cheeseburger!
Speaking of not pretty to look at, the whole town seems pretty run down, but it has some of the best murals in all of West Texas hiding on these abandoned buildings! Be sure to drive down 3rd street for some of the cutest photo op murals. While you are driving, make a quick stop by the Southwest College for the Deaf to see fields of prairie dogs. This is my favorite spot in West Texas to watch them!
Lastly, be sure to visit the Hanger 25 Air Museum. This museum is free and small, but very interactive. There are multiple photo ops for cute pictures and multiple cockpits for kids to sit in planes and experience history firsthand.
Okay I know I said lastly, but I can’t not mention Moss Creek Lake. If you are looking for a summer escape, then Moss Creek Lake is the closest swimming/boating lake there is to Midland. In less than an hour you can be wakeboarding on the lake, and trust me in this heat no activity without water sounds fun!
Odessa (about 28 minutes away)
I guess I should have started with Odessa, because it is the closest to Midland, but I go to Odessa so often that to me it doesn’t feel like a trip. If you live in Midland, it may not feel like a trip either, but here is the question, have you ever really explored Odessa?
Have you ever walked through the Stonehenge Replica at UTPB? Have you ever got a dirty soda at Sodariffic? What about the Meteor Crater just west of town, have you walked the rim of the crater?
Odessa still has a ways to go to catch up with Midland, but it does offer some unique experiences that my kids love! Here are a few of their favorites:
- Feeding the hundreds of ducks at Memorial Park
- Driving around on a Jackrabbit Jamboree to find the giant painted jackrabbits throughout town
- Playing in a dinosaur themed splash pad at UTPB
- Walking the Commanche Trail
Andrews (about 46 minutes away)
Funny I should mention feeding ducks in Odessa, because our favorite place in all of Texas to feed ducks is located Lakeside Park in Andrew, Texas. You get out of your car and it is like a stampede of ducks and geese! This park also has a really cool castle-themed park called the Kids Kingdom.
Some other quick little stops to make in Andrews to the Oil Patch Museum, which is basically a graveyard for old oilfield machinery. Or there is Legacy Park which features a beautiful war memorial. Andrews also has a small birding trail, though I will warn you that you will probably see more cows than birds. Honestly, I think cows are cooler anyway!
While these quick little quirky stops don’t have much to them, there is one spot in Andrews that we go back to every year and that is the Aquatic Center. Midland and Odessa have several aquatic centers, but sometimes they are so busy that you cannot even move without bumping into somebody! This is why we love Andrews’ Aquatic Center, it is never really that busy. It has a giant pool, a climbing wall in the pool, waterslides, a toddler pool, and a wrecked pirate ship splash pad!
Monahans (about 56 minutes)
I saved the best within an hour for last, Monahans. We go to Monahans multiple times a year because we love this tiny town so much! Monahans is home to the famous Monahans Sandhills State Park! See I told you I loved state parks! This is the most unique state park in Texas! It is not a state park built around a lake or one with great hikes and beautiful overlooks, nope this is an area completely covered in beautiful sand dunes.
My kids love coming here to climb up the giant dunes, bury themselves in the sand, and to go dune boarding down the sandy hills. We come here to look for lizards and javelinas, play some volleyball, and to watch the sunset. It is a place you will want to come back to over and over again!
The sandhills are the hit of Monahans, but if you have any energy afterwards be sure to visit the Million Barrel Museum and look for murals. I mean what better way to harness the experience of West Texas than to hike around the base of a million barrel tank!
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Within 2 Hours:
Irran (about 1hr and 21min away)
If you are just wanting to basically go for a drive and find some sort of quirky roadside attraction, Irran is your stop. Out here in the middle of absolutely nowhere is Ally Oop Land! Now if you are not into vintage cartoons, you might not know who Ally Oop is, or his gang. Back in 1932 Ally Oop had is own comic strip! He was a cave man with a pet dino, Dinny and his girlfriend Ooola, and they lived life in the prehistoric kingdom of Moo.
Ally Oop Land is basically a walk through of the cartoon full of photo ops and props, our favorite is sitting on the dinosaur Dinny’s neck! Irran also has a swimming pool and a donut shop, but basically it is a long drive for the quirkiest roadside attraction in all of West Texas.
Colorado City (about an 1hr 13min away)
If you are looking for a lake day, then just drive a little bit farther from Big Spring and you come to Colorado City. Colorado City is even smaller than Big Spring, but they do have a similar feel to them. There are a couple tiny museums to explore, but the main reason you will want to visit this small town is Lake Colorado City State Park.
Like I said, state parks in Texas are simply gold! I love them and for good reason. Lake Colorado City State Park has a very nice lake, and even a nice beach area to swim. My favorite though are its hikes. It is crazy to hike around water, but be absolutely immersed in desert. You will hike rocky trails decorated with all varieties of cactus. It is a beautiful way to enjoy the desert great outdoors and still cool off in the water all in one day!
Fort Stockton (about 1hr 41min away)
Speaking of quirky attractions, Fort Stockton has its very own quirky feature, the world’s largest roadrunner, Pasiano Pete. Fort Stockton is a town for the history lovers. This town has a drive thru audio tour of the oldest buildings in town as well as an old fort that you can walk through. There is a jail, bunkers, stables, barns, and more for you to check out.
Another historical activity offered in town, is to visit the Annie Riggs Museum. This museum is located inside an old home and each room is dedicated to a part of history. There is a room dedicated to antique technology, one for soldiers, one for women, and so on. You can also walk around the stable to see some of the old carriages and stop for a game of chess.
While I may love history, my little kids aren’t super interested in it. To make this day a little more enjoyable for them we stop at Mesquite Tree Gifts for some ice cream! Next it is on to the splash pad (Matthew Quiroz Heros Memorial Spray Park) at for the ultimate cool down in the West Texas heat. This splash pad is a cute pirate ship theme with a batman welcome sign.
Pecos (about 1hr and 31min away)
Would you really be a Texan if you did not make a trip to the home of the first rodeo and dig into your cowboy roots? Or let’s just say cowboy boots, cause all over Pecos, Texas are giant painted boots. Click here for a list of the Pecos boots and their locations. It is a fun scavenger hunt through town and a great way to see all of Pecos.
Be sure to stop by the West of the Pecos Museum to dive a little more into the history of what makes Pecos so special. This old antique filled museum is so much bigger than it looks, rooms and rooms or just old stuff and random animatronic bartenders. It is a lot like a county museum, but bigger. At the end of the museum, we love to grab a bag of cantaloupe jelly beans to snack on as that is a big crop in the area.
Hobbs (about 1hr and 36min away)
Another giant version of a county museum is in Hobbs, NM at the Western Heritage Museum and Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame. This museum regularly features traveling exhibits, which is our favorite part of the museum. We have enjoyed their steampunk exhibit and inventions exhibits, as they were so interactive and unique.
Besides the pop-up exhibits, the museum also has a cowboy hall of fame and a room filled with antiques and artifacts. If you aren’t into history, but into swimming then Hobbs, NM is the best place for a variety of poolside activities to escape the intense heat. With 4 splash pads (Taylor Park, City Park, Mills Park, and Jefferson Park), 2 pools (Humble Pool and Del Norte Pool), one with waterslides, and an indoor waterpark at the CORE. All the water fun you could imagine all in one tiny town.
Lubbock (about 1hr and 51min away)
A lot of these little surrounding towns have a small variety of things to do. Mostly splash pads, county museums, and maybe some other small activity, but Lubbock has something for everyone! Sure, it has to splash pads, pools, and museums; but it takes everything to the next level of fun!
For those hot days there are several splash pads in the area (Maxey Park, Mae Simmons Park, and Rodgers Park) and even a smaller water park, the Water Rampage. Not wanting to get wet, but still trying to escape the heat; try a museum! Science Spectrum is our all time favorite as you can experiment with science at about 100 different stations. Texas Tech Museum has dinosaurs, TexStar Adventure Playhouse has a fun indoor playground, at the Silent Wings Museum walk through the history of airplanes, Blazing Bouncers also has dinosaurs and kid friendly escape rooms, and the FiberMax Center for Discovery is a fun interactive museum about farming/ranching! So many options for a fun museum day.
On days the weather isn’t too smoldering hot, there are tons of fun outdoor activities for families as well! Feed carrots to wild prairie dogs as Prairie Dog Town in McKenzie Park, enjoy the rose garden at Helen Hodges Rose Garden, find a mammoth at the Lubbock Lake National Historic Landmark, hike by hundreds of chirping prairie dogs at the Canyon Lakes trails, and of course visit At’l Do Farms in the fall for a terrific corn maze.
As for food, Lubbock has got it all! Some of our favorites are eating alligator at the Catch, pie at the Honeycomb Pie Shoppe, and eating hot dogs and ice cream at a 50s diner, Holly Hop Ice Cream Shoppe. Nothing like an old diner dancing to the tunes of a giant jukebox and a tummy full of ice cream, trust me that is one happy kid!
San Angelo (about 1hr 45min away)
I have been all over the West Texas area and am proud to say I have thoroughly explored the area, in all my travels I have come to the conclusion that San Angelo is my favorite town to visit. This quirky town is COVERED in art! All around town are painted sheep, murals on every other wall, an alley way decorated with quirky art fixtures, and museums of all varieties.
The Pop Art Museum is an outdoor abandoned building that has been repurposed as a quirky outdoor art museum. I mean even the trees growing here are painted with polka dots. There are so many photo ops and interactive art exhibits. It is a museum that is fun for all ages. If you walk through to the back of the museum, to the alley, and follow the signs they will lead you to Paintbrush Alley which is an extension to the museum. Another fun museum to visit in the area it the Mayer Museum. While it isn’t anything fancy, it does have a giant T-rex dinosaur fossil, which is a win in my little boys’ eyes!
Indoor activities are fun, but the real gems of San Angelo are in the great outdoors. Crazy enough San Angelo has several decent hiking trails. There is the South Concho Trail, the Nature Trail, and let’s not forget the tons of trails offered at San Angelo State Park. Did you know that at San Angelo State Park, not only can you camp and hike, but you can stop at the bison and longhorn paddocks and catch a glimpse of these Texas animals?
On the subject of animals, DONKEYS! San Angelo has one of the Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue facilities and you can go for a tour. I am not even exaggerating when I tell you, you will see a thousand donkeys on this tour and pet hundreds of them! There are donkeys everywhere!
I cannot not mention that San Angelo has several gardens, one of which is an International Waterlily Collection that around September will knock your socks off. I have been to gardens all over America since I was a child and I can tell you, I have never seen this variety of waterlilies! It is a true depiction of the Dolly Parton song, “God’s Coloring Book.”
Lets talk food scene in the area, if you are looking for some quirky and fun places to eat to match the experience you have had in this town there are 2 places you have to try; Old Central Firehouse Pizzeria and Twisted Root Burger. The first time I saw Old Central Firehouse Pizzeria I literally thought, “oh what a cute fire station,” because that is what it is! It took me a little bit to realize it is an actual restaurant. Inside is covered in fireman antiques and art work and the food is amazing! The must eat pizza though is their pickle pizza, I had my doubts, but it is so good! Even my kids loved the pickle pizza!
That leaves us with Twisted Root Burger, which is a whole new level of quirky! This adorable restaurant has incredible food, and funny enough a love for pickles too. They have several different signature pickles for you to chose from to put on your amazing burger! By burger though I don’t necessarily mean beef burger, no you can have an elk burger, camel burger, bison burger, or even an ostrich burger. Just ask what meats they have that day and try something new. Once you order they will give you your famous person card, so while you are waiting for your food you will hear them call up people like The Rock, Kevin James, Whitney Houston, and so on.
I haven’t even mentioned San Angelo’s ice cream or their lakes, there is just so much to see and do in San Angelo, be sure to click here for my complete list.
Slaton (about 1hr and 47min away)
Well I got one more day trip destination for you to try, and that is Slaton, Texas. Slaton, Texas is located just about 30 minutes southeast of Lubbock. This is a tiny town that most people have never even heard of, but it is one that surprised us.
Your first stop should be to visit the Texas Air Museum to take a glimpse in the past and enjoy the history of airplanes in the military. While there isn’t much hands on at this museum there are so many war antiques and historical planes. At the end of the museum, it is almost like walking through a war plane graveyard.
Next stop is the Ransom Canyon/Buffalo Springs area. Driving through Slaton is so flat with endless views of prairie, oil rigs, and crops, but all the sudden you turn down into a canyon with a couple of lakes that seemingly came out of nowhere!
While Lake Ransom Canyon isn’t really for public use, Lake Buffalo Springs has a beach area for day use. Surrounding the lake are tons of really cool homes. I suggest driving by to take a peek at the quirky Steele House by Robert Bruno, it is like a giant modern are looking home.
While driving in that direction a cool place to stop is at the Ransom Canyon Chapel. While the chapel itself is pretty normal its drive way is not. At the base of entering the property is a walk through of Jesus Christ’s life. Start with a giant wooden art piece of his birth, enter a life size tomb, and walk by the crosses on the hill. Then take a stroll up the trail to the chapel for a timeline art depiction of His life and ministry. It is just a beautiful way to remember His death, life and resurrection.
In Conclusion
While none of this day trips are jaw dropping or thrilling, they are an escape from the stresses of everyday life. They are places to create memories, to unplug and enjoy. West Texas doesn’t appear to have much to it, but as you explore you might just be surprised by what it does have to offer. From lakes to swim at, quirky art to enjoy, and delicious foods; West Texas has a little bit to offer everyone.
Each town has its own unique theme and assortment of activities, but if you asked me to narrow it down to our top three favorite daytrips from Midland, Texas within 2 hours I would say San Angelo, Hobbs, and Monahans. We have made some wonderful memories in these areas and that is really what it is all about. Creating memories and spending times with the ones we love, while enjoying what God has given us. I hope you can fill your time in West Texas with memories and adventure as well!
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