We've Been to Waco Three Times. Here's What We Do Differently Now.
The first trip to Waco, you do everything right. You show up at the Silos at 10am on a Saturday, wait in the parking lot for a spot, work your way through the market at the pace of the crowd, put your name on the Magnolia Table waitlist and watch it tick down on your phone, squeeze in the mammoth site between lunch and dinner, and collapse into bed having checked every box on the list you built from travel blogs exactly like this one.
It's a good trip. It genuinely is.
But by the third trip, you've figured some things out. The list is shorter. The days are slower. The things you skip are different from what you'd expect, and the things you'd never skip again are different from what you expected too.
This is what three Waco trips taught us — and what we'd tell anyone who's been before and is trying to figure out how to do it better the second time around.
Trip One: We Tried to Do Everything
The first trip was a sprint. We had a weekend, we had a list, and we were going to get through it.
Saturday at the Silos from opening until early afternoon. Magnolia Table for brunch — we waited 45 minutes, which in hindsight was completely worth it but felt interminable at the time. The mammoth site in the afternoon, which we almost skipped because we were running behind and ended up being the highlight of the whole trip. Dinner somewhere downtown. Collapse.
Sunday was a half-day attempt at Cameron Park, a rushed loop through Magnolia Home, and the drive home feeling like we'd seen Waco but hadn't quite been there.
We booked again about six weeks later.
Trip Two: We Slowed Down a Little and Stayed in the Little House
The second trip we stayed at the Little House — the actual Season 2, Episode 1 property — and that changed everything about the shape of the trip before we even left the driveway.
When you're staying somewhere that genuinely wants you to be still in it, you find yourself being still in it. The morning under the 200-year-old oak with coffee happened on its own, without anyone planning it. The afternoon where we skipped two things on the list because the backyard with the lawn games was too good to leave — that happened on its own too.
We still did the Silos. We still did Magnolia Table. But we did them differently. We went to the Silos on a Tuesday morning and it was a completely different experience — unhurried, easy, the version of that place that the weekend crowds don't get to have. We went to Magnolia Table without a waitlist strategy and just put our names in and walked around the neighborhood and came back when they called us.
The trip felt twice as long as the first one, in the best possible way. We stayed the same number of nights.
We booked a third trip before we got home. This time, the Barndominium.
Trip Three: We Stopped Trying to Justify the Time We Spent Doing Nothing
The Barndominium is a different kind of property than the Little House, and it produces a different kind of trip.
The Little House wraps around you. It's warm and cozy and intimate in a way that makes you want to be inside it, or on the back deck under the oak, or nowhere particularly far from either.
The Barndominium opens up. Sixteen private acres. A spring-fed lake. An 800-square-foot deck on two levels facing west. The kind of outdoor space that makes you realize you've been living your life mostly indoors and you had completely stopped noticing.
By the third trip, we had stopped apologizing for the hours we spent on that deck doing nothing that could be described as productive or touristic. We had stopped feeling like we were wasting the trip by not being somewhere. We had fully accepted that the deck, at that property, at that hour, was not a detour from the experience — it was the experience.
That shift took three trips to complete. We're not sure it can be rushed, but we're trying to help you get there faster. 🌅
What We Do Differently Now
We go on a weekday if we can possibly manage it
This is the single highest-impact change we made between trips one and three, and we recommend it above everything else on this list.
Waco on a Tuesday is a different city than Waco on a Saturday. The Silos are the same place — same market, same bakery, same food trucks — but the energy is completely different. You can actually move through the space at your own pace. You can stand in front of a display for three minutes without being gently nudged aside. You can sit on the lawn with a coffee and feel like you have the place to yourself, because you nearly do.
If you have any flexibility in your schedule — any at all — use it to shift your trip to a weekday. You'll see the same Waco. You'll experience a better one.
We go to the Silos twice and don't feel weird about it
First visit: take it all in, do the full loop, buy the things, eat the cupcake. Let the novelty land.
Second visit, the next morning or the morning after: go slower. Go to Magnolia Press first and get the coffee before the crowd. Walk through Magnolia Home without a time limit and actually look at how the rooms are put together. Sit on the lawn and watch how the light hits the silos at that hour.
The second visit is when you stop being a tourist and start being a guest. It's worth doing.
We book Magnolia Table on our terms now
The waitlist is real and the waits can be long and none of that needs to be as stressful as it was the first time.
What we do now: put our names in first thing in the morning, before we go anywhere, even before we've fully decided what we're doing that day. Then we go do something — the Suspension Bridge, a walk through the neighborhood, the Magnolia Home furniture store, whatever — and we let the wait happen in the background while we're already having a good time.
When they call, we go. The biscuits are worth whatever the wait was. They always are. 🍳
We stopped skipping Cameron Park
The first trip, Cameron Park was the thing we were going to do if we had time and didn't end up having time. The second trip, same. The third trip we built it in on purpose, early in the morning before the heat, and walked the Lover's Leap trail down to the Brazos River bluffs.
It is one of the most beautiful things in Waco. It is free. It takes about an hour. We have no explanation for why it took us three trips to make it non-negotiable, but here we are telling you: make it non-negotiable.
We spend the last evening at the property
The first trip, we tried to squeeze in one more thing on Sunday evening before the drive home. Dinner out, a stop somewhere, the usual resistance to the trip ending.
By the third trip, we had learned that the last evening belongs to the property. Cook something at the house or pick up food on the way back from wherever you've been, take it out to the deck, and let the trip end the same way it started — outside, unhurried, with the lake in front of you and no particular reason to be anywhere else.
That's the version of the last evening you'll remember. Every time.
We leave one day completely unplanned
This was the hardest shift for some members of our group and the easiest for others, and by the third trip it had become non-negotiable for all of us.
One full day — usually Saturday — with nothing on the calendar before noon. Coffee on the deck. Breakfast at the house. The morning going wherever it goes at whatever pace it chooses. The afternoon decided by what everyone actually feels like doing rather than what was decided three weeks ago when nobody knew how the trip was going to feel.
Some of our best Waco moments came out of that unplanned time. A long conversation that wouldn't have happened if we'd been rushing to the next thing. A spontaneous walk that turned into two hours along the Brazos. An afternoon fishing off the Barndominium dock that nobody planned and everybody loved.
Leave the day open. See what Waco puts in it. 🎣
The One Thing That Hasn't Changed Across All Three Trips
We always stay in one of the Fixer Upper homes.
This is not sentimentality, though there is some of that. It's that staying in a property with real history and real intention built into it — the Little House with its original floors and Joanna's original furniture and the fireplace Chip found inside the wall, the Barndominium with its high ceilings and the lake and the deck that makes every evening feel like a reward — changes how the whole trip feels.
You come back to something at the end of each day that is warm and specific and not interchangeable with anywhere else you've ever stayed. That matters more than the thread count or the amenities or any of the things hotel reviews spend their time measuring.
The first trip taught us what Waco is. The second trip taught us how to be in it. The third trip taught us that we're going to keep coming back for a long time, and that the homes are a significant part of why.
Book the one that fits your group. Come back for the other one next time.
There will be a next time. There always is. 🏡
📩 Check availability for the Barndominium and the Little House — and start planning the trip that changes how you travel.