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Family Travel with Colleen Kelly – Dallas, Texas

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Colleen Kelly and her family roll into Dallas to prove Texas-sized fun doesn’t have to break the bank or the kids’ attention spans.

In episode 408 of Family Travel with Colleen Kelly, the PBS travel host and her family spend a few days showing why Dallas earns a spot on the family road-trip map. The stops range from a downtown park built over a freeway to a garden overrun with pumpkins, with a stop for Tex-Mex in between. It’s a practical itinerary any family could copy, not just a highlight reel.

• The family tours the State Fair of Texas, taking in livestock exhibits, creative art competitions, vendor booths, and the 55-foot animatronic mascot known as Big Tex.
• At Klyde Warren Park, they check out the children’s play area, a community yoga session, and the rotating lineup of food trucks.
• The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden’s autumn Pumpkin Village, built from thousands of pumpkins and squash, gives the kids a themed display to climb through and explore.
• For a taste of local cuisine, the family eats authentic Tex-Mex at Dallas taqueria La Ventana.

Big Tex and the State Fair Grounds

Kelly’s Dallas episode opens at the State Fair of Texas, the sprawling annual event that mixes agricultural tradition with midway spectacle. The family walks through livestock barns and creative arts exhibits before circling back to the fairground’s signature landmark: Big Tex, the 55-foot animatronic cowboy who greets fairgoers with a booming voice. Between the vendor stalls and the exhibition halls, the segment plays like a crash course in why the fair has stayed a fixture of Texas fall traditions for generations.

Klyde Warren Park’s Urban Reset

From the fairgrounds, the family heads to Klyde Warren Park, the deck park built over the Woodall Rodgers Freeway in downtown Dallas. It’s a different kind of stop — no rides, no midway noise, just a children’s play area, a community yoga class unfolding on the lawn, and a rotating cluster of food trucks parked along the edges. Kelly uses the park to show how a dense urban center can still deliver a green, kid-friendly break in the middle of a packed itinerary.

Thousands of pumpkins and squash, arranged into a walk-through village the kids can climb and explore — that’s the Arboretum’s answer to fall break.

Pumpkin Village at the Dallas Arboretum

The most visually striking stop in the episode is the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden’s seasonal Pumpkin Village, an autumn display built entirely from thousands of pumpkins and squash arranged into an expansive, walkable set piece. It’s the kind of stop that photographs well and keeps young kids occupied for longer than a typical garden walk, which is exactly the balance Kelly’s show is built around — families who want the outdoors but also want their kids actually engaged.

Tex-Mex at La Ventana

No trip through Dallas is complete without the food, and Kelly’s family wraps their culinary detour at La Ventana, a local taqueria serving up authentic Tex-Mex. It’s a smaller, quieter stop compared to the fairgrounds and the park, but it rounds out the episode’s picture of Dallas as a city where the food scene is as much a part of the family itinerary as the attractions. Families chasing the same kind of city-by-city breakdown can find a similar approach in Kelly’s Saguenay Lac St. Jean episode, where she applies the same mix of nature, culture, and food to a very different region.

Dallas isn’t the flashiest stop on Kelly’s map, but it’s a useful template — big public attraction, quiet urban green space, seasonal garden event, local restaurant — for any parent plotting a similar weekend. Families looking for more destination-by-destination breakdowns built the same way can check out Ireland with Kids for another example of how a family vlog turns a city into a checklist worth actually following.