Totally Awesome Vacation: Dallas/Ft. Worth Day 1

Arriving in Dallas late on the night of the 3rd, Scott (my best football traveling buddy and all around super guy that I love love love) and I drove straight to the stadium to check it out. As much as I didn't want to be (I hate Jerry Jones), I was REALLY impressed by the stadium. It is SO huge. And actually a very pretty building. It made us super excited for Saturday night!

The next morning, we decided to check out Ft. Worth before everyone else came in later that night. From what we could tell, Ft. Worth is kind of a dumpy little town, but there are a few fun sites to check out. Our first stop was the Ft. Worth Stock Yards. Home of the cattle auctions and stock pens for the cattle, sheep and swine market for most of Texas since the late 1800s - 1950s, the Stockyards are a little throwback to the era of the American Hero, the Cowboy. (Scott vehemently disagrees with me that the Cowboy is an American Hero.) I think we're going to set up a poll. (See right)

Every day, there is a cattle drive right down the main street of this bit of historic Ft. Worth. Which was fun to watch. Those longhorns are HUGE. We checked out some of the shops there and I bought a cowboy hat. Mostly because I am planning on wearing it next weekend. I will not be including photos.

We walked around the area for some time and went to a fantastic Tex-Mex place that my boss had recommended. It was here that we learned our first lessons about Texas restaurants. 1) They like food really spicy down here. 2) Everything is bigger in Texas, but especially the portions. It was deliciously filling. Scott unfortunately likes chunky salsa and got burned by the spicy.

From here, we walked over to Billy Bob's. It is the world's largest Honky-Tonk. It was enormous! They had several stages, a dance floor, live bull riding, lots of pool tables, arcade games and lots of bar areas. We hung out there for a while to enjoy the AC, race the video game cars and Scott taught me how to properly play pool. Although there is no chivalry here because he promptly kicked my butt.

We drove around Ft. Worth for a while, trying to see what there is to see (which is to say - not much. Even the locals first suggestion was Billy Bob's) and then drove around TCU's campus. TCU is a rival in the Mountain West. We often forget about them because they are all the way over in Texas (and it's easy to forget to be scared of an opponent whose mascot is the horned frog and their main color is purple.) We drove right up to the stadium. It was a pretty stadium, but SMALL. Almost 20,000 less than LaVell Edwards.

By this point, we were pooped out. We headed back to the hotel to take a nap because after dinner, we were going to a RODEO! About 20 minutes north of Dallas is Lewisville, where the real Texans were rodeoing (is that the correct verb??) on Friday night. It was SO fun!

We met the rodeo queen (TOO much make-up, fringe and sparkles for a 14 year old - actually any human) and we were highly entertained. There was bareback riding and bull riding. They were SO young. One of the kids got stomped on pretty good after being thrown from his horse. Within seconds, they carried him out of the way and restarted the events. It was amazing how non-chalant they were with it. The mutton busting was my favorite - those kids were adorable. Scott was rather distracted by one of the guys sitting near us as he was convinced the guy was a pirate. I didn't get a photo.

We crawled back to the hotel to find Kendall and Chelsi had arrived, Jason and Ben got there a few minutes later and we watched Sportscenter the rest of the night to get ready for the big game the next day!