We had a lovely start to our day. We had been hoping to catch up with Blake and Rebecca, the son and daughter in law of our friends Gae and Greg. Blake fell in love with Bec, a lovely Southern belle from Lafayette and they now make their home in Dallas. This morning we drove the short drive to their home and managed to catch Bec before she had to head to work. Blake took us to an excellent little cafe nearby for breakfast where I felt like I was in Newtown, best coffee in a month. He had to get to work too but it was just wonderful to spend an hour catching up with their lives in this great country.
Afterwards we packed up our bits and pieces and checked out of the hotel to head west to Fort Worth. Dallas and Fort Worth are two seperate cities but they share an international airport and together with all their satellite towns they make up the Metroplex. It’s huge!
Fort Worth has the reputation of being “Where the West Begins” , and a lot of that is tied to its stockyards, a former livestock market that has operated since 1866. Now it is “cowboy central” , with a rodeo every Friday and Saturday night at the Cowtown Colliseum, a Cowboy Hall of Fame Museum and a cowboy Walk of Fame with the customary stars in the sidewalk.
Every day at 11.30 am and 4 pm there is a cattle drive down the Main Street of the stockyards and we waited in stinking hot weather to view the spectacle ( today was the hottest day of the whole trip, it was a shocker!) 11.30 came and the drive started, I think Neil and I were (foolishly) expecting something like a stampede…but this was about 30 cows walking in a sedate fashion down the street accompanied by several Cowboys and cowgirls. However, it was still interesting to see the long horn cattle, those horns really are long!
We’d already had time to wander around the stockyards to see the station area etc and it was just so hot we decided to beat a retreat to a huge Outlet shopping mall north of the airport. It was humongous, took us 2 hours to walk around it! We picked up a few bargains but the options for lunch were a bit limited so we drove down south east a bit to another mall for a bite to eat. This was also huge with a Macy’s, J.c Penney, Sears, Dillard’s and Nordstrom department stores as well as hundreds of smaller stores. We wandered and ate and found a quiet corner where we made good use of Stabucks free WiFi before we finally set off for the airport.
The rental car return went smoothly and checkin was straightforward and we’re now waiting in the Qantas lounge for the return flight. It’s been a great trip, not the spectacular scenery of previous trips but a more hometown experience in the states that don’t get the big numbers of international visitors. We’ve been welcomed over and over again by so many friendly Americans that have been delighted that we have come to see them.
I’m looking forward to going home. I miss my family very much and my own bed! But I’ll also miss this amazing country and look forward to coming back, we have 14 more states to see!