Fort Worth & Rodeo

Friday, May 2, 2014

The hotel doesn't serve breakfast and the peace and quiet is ruined by 6 in the morning when the truck and van drivers leave their engines running. Even with earplugs, it's impossible to get any sleep. What a terrible hotel!

At 8:00 am, we get in the car. It's quite chilly outside. We drive to downtown Fort Worth for breakfast. Parking in the garage is 7$ for 3 hours. The city is completely dead.

It's Friday, not Sunday! There's not even any traffic or commuters on the streets. What is this place?? In the "Old Town", near Sundance Square, we find a restaurant that's open and offers more than just coffee and a muffin. Their breakfast menu offers eggs, bacon, potatoes, and a divine coffee with free refills. We have to have three cups of coffee before we leave.

We take a walk through the streets to Bass Concert Hall, which is next to Sundance Square. Even though this is the old part of Fort Worth, everything looks new, but made to look old. Only the Courthouse seems to be truly old, as well as a few surrounding streets. After 2.5 hours in Fort Worth, we get back in the car and drive to Parker to go to the outlet. The sun is shining now, but it's unexpectedly cold in the shade.

Again, we get lost on the poorly marked multilevel highways that dominate the area between Fort Worth and Dallas. We experience the slow pace of shopping in Texas at the outlet. After some detours, we make our way back to Fort Worth to visit the Stockyards and see the Cattle Drive at 4:00 pm.

Twice a day, a few Longhorns are driven down the main street here, solely for the entertainment of tourists. We're expecting crowds of tourists today, but even finding parking is surprisingly easy. We quickly get tickets for the rodeo tonight and join a few hundred tourists on the street as a few "cowboys" drive about 10 Longhorns past us. Okay, now we've seen it too...

It's almost 5:00 pm now and we haven't eaten anything since breakfast. We walk back to Riscky's, where we were last night. Considering the temperatures here at night and our past experiences with outdoor rodeos, we dress warmer than before and are surprised to find that the rodeo is actually indoors. Maybe it's a combination of "too hot" and "too cold" that requires this so that there are visitors who stay the whole time. There's a bit more activity on the street in front of the rodeo arena now compared to yesterday.

Some people position their Longhorn for photos or decorate their cars with Longhorn horns on the hood. The people here, if from Texas, really do dress the way you would expect: with a Stetson, button-up shirt, jeans, and, of course, real cowboy boots.

The rodeo isn't quite as exciting as we've seen before. The participants are probably more of the B to C level, as the prize money at events like this is nowhere near as high as, for example, at the 4th of July rodeo in St. Paul. That obviously attracts the top performers, but not here. But it's a nice evening program and helps us adjust to the time difference.

On the way back, we follow a sign to the Stockyards that somehow leads elsewhere than where we came from, but you tend to trust signs... Unfortunately, it's the only sign and we quickly find ourselves in the middle of nowhere. The GPS is no help - never again Navfree USA! Since the GPS doesn't recognize the address of Motel6, we drive based on instinct and the map in complete darkness. Even if you have a map, it's no use without any signs. We finally arrive at the hotel at 11:30 pm after nearly two hours of driving (it should normally take about 20 minutes).

In my bathroom, there are two fat cockroaches on and under my toiletry bag... I quickly gather all my things from the bathroom and throw them into my suitcase (fortunately, it was completely closed when we left, who knows who might have made it their home otherwise), then I go down to the reception desk. I report that there are bugs in my room and the lady at the desk seriously asks me if I want another room. Well, what else would I want??? I don't want to have a conversation with her about the cockroaches. It's midnight and I'm really exhausted. So I get another room key and move two rooms down. I cover the drain in the shower with a towel and feel disgusted as I try to fall asleep. I've hated cockroaches since my time in the dormitory in Volgograd in 1979. Yuck!