Texas - Day 20 - Fort Worth, Richardson, north to Denison

Eisenhower State Park, Denison
Sunday, 22 November 2020

Pres. Kennedy was killed 57 years ago today.  I still remember parts of it clearly, as does everyone who was old enough at the time to understand it, I'm sure.

today's route

detail in the D/FW area

Weatherford

This past weekend's campground was on the west side of Weatherford, so I hadn't seen anything of the town when we came in.  Today I insisted that Google let me drive through a bit of town.

Weatherford, with an estimated population of 31,000, seems to be growing by leaps and bounds: more than 5,000 every 10 years.  I suppose it's close enough to the metro area, yet still seems to be a small town, and that's where the attraction lies.  Weatherford, founded in 1858, bills itself as "True Texas."  I suppose so.

Parker County
Courthouse

The county courthouse sits astride the end of Main Street, so I had an unobstructed view as I drove into town.  A very nice view, too; it was built between 1884 and 1886 and my first thought was it was Victorian in style, though I'm probably way wrong, knowing nothing about it, except I can say it was during Queen Victoria's reign (1819-1901).

I saw a sign for the Parker County Peach Festival, which I'm sure is well worth going to, whenever we're done with this stupid virus.

I thought I was still in Weatherford when I saw a sign for the town of Hudson Oaks, pop. 1,024, but a thousand residents qualifies as a separate town for sure.

Fort Worth

I lived here early in my life and remember absolutely nothing, so I wanted to drive around a little.

I started in the far north at the Fort Worth Stockyards.  I didn't know that this whole area of town has been a historic district since 1976, and includes the stockyards themselves as well as the buildings and brick streets.

This is an internet photo, but it's also about what I saw.  Those are obviously not the stockyards themselves but instead the sign marks the historic district, I think.  The stockyards look like stockyards, which is just as well, since it hosts rodeos and other activities not suited to city streets.  Here's a link to some of what's offered, including "the world's only twice daily cattle drive."   https://www.fortworthstockyards.org  Those original brick streets are hard to drive on with an RV.

In that area I saw a bar with a sign: "Our beer is colder than your ex's  heart."

Tarrant County
Courthouse

Driving into downtown from the north, I had a good view of the courthouse, but this photo I found online is really deceptive.  What I actually saw was the courthouse (built 1895) completely dwarfed by those 2 huge office buildings looming behind it.   They're very tall dark glass structures towering over this sweet little courthouse, that you can see isn't all that little when it's on its own.  What I saw made for a weird picture.

The downtown is a mix of buildings that are almost all at least 50 years old, more likely 75 or more.  It reminded me of downtown Seattle, if you've ever been there.  And it reminded me of what Austin would have looked like if it hadn't allowed all the old buildings to be torn down and replaced with glass.  Everything's glass.  I don't quite understand what was so wrong with stones and bricks.  I'm sure these new ones are much more comfortable for the people working in them, but I'd have thought the old ones could have been retrofitted for about the same amount of money as tearing them down and building from scratch.  And despite all its old buildings, Fort Worth didn't seem to be decrepit or behind the times.  It seemed solid and established.  

I was very surprised to find that I liked it a lot and would enjoy spending more time exploring what the city has to offer.

Back on the road

In Arlington, I passed a billboard for Coors Seltzer: "Help Save the Trinity River - Drink a Seltzer."  I didn't know the Trinity was in trouble and couldn't easily find anything online about it so assume it's just an advertising slogan.  Not a bad one, actually.

Also in Arlington, I passed Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, then Six Flags Over Texas itself.  That Hurricane Harbor is new to me, and I can't find online when it first opened.  It's a water park that's one of a chain that Six Flags operates.  Six Flags Over Texas I know well, or used to many years ago.  It first opened in 1961, and our family started going when we moved to the Dallas area in 1964.  I could tell from my highway view, though, that lots of new rides have been added in the intervening years.  Online comments made it all sound prohibitively expensive.

I saw a billboard with the "Click It Or Ticket" slogan, but this one showed a picture of an ordinary seat belt buckle attached to a beautiful tooled leather cowboy belt.  Very Texas-y.

Yet another billboard was for the Choctaw Casino in Durant (OK), where I stayed in their RV park for several days this past August.  The ad said it was the "Official Casino of the Cowboy."  I know that didn't mean the Dallas Cowboys, because another Oklahoma casino has that distinction.  I guess it's just referring to the cowboy influence that OK and TX share, because that "official" designation doesn't look like it was conferred by anybody "official."

I drove on up through Irving, Dallas and into Richardson.  Back in the olden days, when we lived here in the '60s, these towns were clearly separate from each other, with fields and crops and cows and things in between.  Now they just all run together and only highway signs show where they stop and start.

Richardson

My first stop was the city's recycling center.  It's the first one I've found in ages that will actually accept not just glass but also something as simple as mixed paper, and plastics that aren't just bottles.  I had a lot of stuff to get rid of and what a relief it was.

The dogs and I walked around the neighborhood a little bit and then went on to the storage place I've been renting.  I've been carting around 3 fans I'd bought last summer that I haven't wanted to use since then, even when it was hot enough for them to be useful, because they need to be reassembled.  I figured I wouldn't be likely to use them even next summer, unless I were to be sitting in one place for a while (like I was when I parked in front of Anna & David's house) in a very hot climate when I wasn't able to plug into a 30 amp power source.  Guessing that it's an unlikely set of circumstances for the foreseeable future (which is becoming less foreseeable as time goes on), I stuck them in the storage space and instantly gained some extra storage space in my basement.

I also stopped at a grocery store and got provisioned up.

Driving to D&A's house, I saw a flock of Blue Jays.  An actual flock.  They seem like such solitary birds - I don't often see more than 1 or 2 at a time - so seeing at least 8 in someone's front yard was exciting.  They're such pretty birds.

Anna may well be Dexter's favorite human being, and when he saw her come out of their house he started quivering with excitement.  I still had a long drive to get to tonight's campground so didn't want to stay very long.  I was really only there to pick up my mail to save them the trouble and expense of sending it to me at some miscellaneous post office.  But the dogs got to go out into the newly-sodded back yard, which they loved, and I got a chance to see my family for a bit.

Back on the road

Once past Plano and McKinney, I started to see some countryside again.  I passed a series of towns: Melissa, Anna, Van Alstyne, and Howe (pop. 2,600 - the only one with a pop. sign), where I saw a sign saying "hay for sale," thus proving it's in the country.

Then I got to Sherman (pop. about 42,000), which is back in big-city-land with companies like Finisar (optical communications systems) & Tyson (food processing) & Fisher/Emerson (valves & regulators for LNG uses) & Kaiser Aluminum (metal products).  Sherman says it has a Historic Downtown.  I know it has vast numbers of national franchises.

I didn't really go into the town of Denison - just passed through its city limits.  But I saw signs saying it has a population of 25,118, it's the birthplace of Pres. Eisenhower, and it's near Lake Texoma.

And on to tonight's campground.