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Ten Days in Texas

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Manny:
So Mrs Manny, Dochka and I decided to go to Texas recently. Our daughter has acquired a liking for Alan Jackson's music from me, and he is on his final tour, and one of the dates was in Fort Worth. BB had previously mentioned the Fort Worth is full of reasonably normal people, and having had a good experience visiting TN and MS last year, I may be getting a liking for the Deep South. So Texas was certainly worth a look.

We booked Business Class for the transatlantic flights, which translates to "First Class" on internal US flights. However, while transatlantic Business Class includes a fully flat bed, domestic US "First Class" is more like European Premium Economy, just with a larger luggage allowance. It’s fine for a 2–3 hour hop, but First Class it is not. And why do Americans have absurdly large amounts of carry-on?

Bill had told me a few days prior that it was 27c where he is in Texas, and his wife was planting tomatoes, so Wifey took summer clothes. We connected through Orlando on the way, and it was indeed lovely and warm there. But over in Fort Worth, the weather was decidedly British for the duration, ranging from 4c to a max of about 16c. With sporadic rain.  :chuckle:

I hired a car with Avis, booked the largest SUV class they offered, and was hoping for a Suburban or a GMC, but ended up with a Nissan Armada. Which to Brits is something like a Patrol, big enough and adequate for purpose, if a tad underpowered, Japanese and forgettable.

Every hotel in the area was already booked (probably due to the concert), so we ended up at some place called a Hilton Home2 Suites, which is a two-room suite with a small kitchen. It's not my ideal sort of place, a bit basic, but functional and not very expensive at £118 a night including breakfast.

Our first job was some clothes shopping, as Wifey had mainly packed dresses and heels, which weren’t exactly in keeping with the local style. She soon put that right with a cowboy hat (as did I), a couple of pairs of boots, and some jeans for daytime wear. That said, in the evenings, she was still the best-dressed woman in any restaurant, not to mention one of the slimmest, with strangers frequently complimenting her outfits. She now has a rather nice pair of blue cowgirl boots and a collection of other Western-style gear. As for me, I stocked up on George Strait edition Wrangler jeans, which fit perfectly, along with some quality belts and a pair of alligator cowboy boots, none of which are easy to find in the UK. I also decided I prefer Boot Barn over Cavender’s.



On the whole, it seems they are a badly dressed lot in Fort Worth. Most of them look like they got dressed in the dark in whatever shapeless sportswear was lying on the floor from yesterday. That said, especially around the Stockyards area, some girls do dress Western, which is a nice look.

Manny:
I always used to enjoy the TV show Dallas, and Southfork Ranch is in Parker, only 65 miles or so from Fort Worth, so I had to go there. They do tours, its pretty cool.



We did quite a bit of shooting too, pistols and machine guns are of course verboten in the Socialist UK, so it's nice to play with them when abroad. I'm pretty decent at it already, and wifey was always a bit lukewarm on it. But this time she got right into it.



She can now load a 9mm magazine as fast as anyone, and took a particular liking to the Magnum 357, a seven-shot revolver with 38 special ammo. Shame we can't have a legal one here. I'd like one of those too.

Driving around the DFW area is pretty painless, which is a good job as everything you want to do seems to be 20-30 miles away or more. There's a lot of tolls. There is some kind of fixed deal on rental cars so I don't know how much I would have spent otherwise, but I bet they can mount up if you live there. Some are $7 or more. Unlike some other places I've been in the US where everyone drifts about at 55 ish in a world of their own, folks there do like the right pedal. It's pretty similar to driving in the UK, as most people tend to do 70-90 on the motorways despite the limit being mostly 65. Just like in the UK, there's very little lane discipline, so you've to keep your wits about you. Lanes merge randomly without road markings - which catches you off guard the first few times. I like being able to turn right on a red light - very logical, I don't know why we never implemented that. I like the Express Lanes where you can bypass the standing traffic, and the speed limit of 75 on many of those, and many people do 100 ish. And I didn't see any traffic cops or speed cameras at all. Fine by me.  :thumbsup:

About food: Restaurants seem to be limited to steak houses, and crappy lower-end stuff like chicken and taco places run by Hispanics or blacks. But I like steak, so ten days of steak houses it was. They seem to be mostly chains like Texas Roadhouse, Saltgrass and Longhorn, but they're all pretty decent. They do know how to cook a steak there. Better steaks than commonly found in the UK. Plenty of fishy options for wifey too. I did try an expensive one called Del Friscos in central Fort Worth. It was no better than a Longhorn to be fair food wise. Just three times the price and better-dressed people. I was happy enough among all the cowboy hat-wearing folk in the regular steak houses.

As we had a little kitchenette thing, we got some snacks from the local supermarkets. Organic stuff isn't plentiful. It's very tedious having to scan the labels to try and avoid the corn syrup, seed oils and additives you can't pronounce that American food is laced with. But it can be done. I found Albertsons better than Target. Bottled water seems to be bottled tap water mostly from what I can tell, but a local woman put me onto the local spring water Ozarka, which was fine. I suppose locals get to know over time what to avoid if they seek to avoid unhealthy additives. Why does salt have added iodine? Why does milk have added Vitamin D? Why does everything seem to have something added? Makes no sense to me. And don't get me started on refrigerated eggs.  :chuckle:

Manny:
We did some horse riding a few times. I had horses as a kid so am a good rider. Wifey and Dochka have been learning for the last few months. We did some trail riding with a few different guys.



Western saddles and stirrups for me are way more comfortable than their British equivalents. However good a rider you might be in the UK, you'll have to re-learn some stuff to ride Western. Loose reigns and different signals seem counterintuitive to us. And one horse I was on didn't like being held back on a tighter reign and started dancing about and eventually tried to get me off rodeo style. He didn't manage it, but the guy told me the last bloke who rode "British" had the same trouble with that horse. A big Irish rugby player apparently. And the horse did manage to get him off.  :chuckle:

Wifey brought her British riding hat, jodhpurs and riding boots with her. The trail-riding guy thought she was dressed for dressage. They probably don't see that very often there.

I wouldn't mind going back and trying some herding and roping, actually. That looks quite fun. I've recently been watching Yellowstone on Netflix, which apart from being a good series in itself, is more interesting if you are equestrian-inclined.

The Alan Jackson concert was at Dickies Arena. He was supported by Zach Top and James Carothers.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr3YcFNGpHw
It was a good evening. Great to finally see AJ live. I discovered him in the 90s during a trip to FL.

About the local people and Texas generally: I found the people around DFW mostly really nice and friendly, not dissimilar to when I was in Memphis. I guess it's the famous southern hospitality. I'm not sure if that is reflected across the rest of Texas or not. Quite a different vibe to FL or TN though. TX feels more like a different country than a state within a larger country. Texans seem very proud to be Texans. The Texas flag flies alongside the stars and stripes everywhere. And as Texas is almost three times larger than the UK, it could be its own country. I was trying to explain the geographical make-up of the US to my daughter, and suggested she viewed it rather like the EU in that it's more like 50 different countries joined together, the differences between many of the states are so marked.

I did notice that the DFW area is very very clean. Almost no litter. And nobody seems to smoke. Most restaurants don't even have ashtrays or smoking areas outside. Is that the same across the rest of TX?

The air *seemed* very clean to me. And it's not a densely populated place, but a look on the weather app on the iPhone showed an air quality in the high 50s, just nudging the amber. Where we live in the UK, it's typically under 10, usually 2-3. I'm not sure why that is. This is what GPT says on the subject:


--- Quote ---Fort Worth's air feels clean, but its AQI in the high 50s is likely due to factors like ozone pollution from vehicle emissions, dust from the dry climate, and fine particulates from industry and construction. Unlike the UK, where frequent rain clears pollutants and ozone is lower, Texas' warmer, drier conditions allow more pollutants to linger. Texas also has more industry and refineries, which might not be immediately noticeable but still contribute to air quality readings.
--- End quote ---

We hear a lot about immigration in the southern US, and the place has quite a few Mexicans and other Hispanics, but it didn't seem like so many to me. It's my observation that if you ship lots of them out as Trump intends to, the service industries would collapse. Y'all will have no cleaners or servers.  :chuckle:

One thing I did notice was almost zero Muslims. Which was nice. Not so many black people either, it seems a very white place. I noticed that as we connected home via JFK, and you see there wall-to-wall immigrants, rather like London. NYC seems like a different country to Fort Worth they are so different.

DFW overall reminded me of that classic Top Gear episode in neighbouring Alabama when Jeremy Clarkson joked about the holy trinity being George Bush, God, and country music. I’d suggest a revised list: pickup trucks, guns, country music, and God… in that order. I've never seen so many churches in one place. There are many things I recognised from that TG Alabama special about the south generally, though. But it’s a fun place to spend some time in, and a taste of freedom that’s far away from Starmer’s failed socialist experiment. I enjoyed it and will certainly go back to TX.

I went to Texas with one eye on a possible snowbird location for the future, a place to spend a couple of months a year in over Christmas, perhaps. It seems the climate is a bit British at that time of year, so it's not ideal in that regard. And summers I gather are far too hot if it can get over 40c. FL might be more suitable for that.

My daughter took tons of footage, and I compiled some into a 90-second reel I've put on the RUA Twitter >>here<<. I particularly like the bloke fondling his machine gun in a car park at the start. That was a great candid catch.  :coffeeread:

Contrarian:

--- Quote from: Manny on February 20, 2025, 10:26:01 AM ---So Mrs Manny, Dochka and I decided to go to Texas recently. Our daughter has acquired a liking for Alan Jackson's music from me, and he is on his final tour, and one of the dates was in Fort Worth. BB had previously mentioned the Fort Worth is full of reasonably normal people, and having had a good experience visiting TN and MS last year, I may be getting a liking for the Deep South. So Texas was certainly worth a look.

Bill had told me a few days prior that it was 27c where he is in Texas, and his wife was planting tomatoes, so Wifey took summer clothes. We connected through Orlando on the way, and it was indeed lovely and warm there. But over in Fort Worth, the weather was decidedly British for the duration, ranging from 4c to a max of about 16c. With sporadic rain.  :chuckle:

I hired a car, booked the largest SUV and was hoping for a Suburban or a GMC, but ended up with a Nissan Armada. Which to Brits is something like a Patrol, big enough and adequate for purpose, if a tad underpowered and forgettable.

Every hotel in the area was already booked (probably due to the concert), so we ended up at some place called a Hilton Home2 Suites, which is a two-room suite with a small kitchen. It's not my ideal sort of place, a bit basic, but functional and not very expensive at £118 a night including breakfast.

First job was to do some clothes shopping, as Wifey had brought mostly dresses and heels, and the locals tend not to dress like that. So she got herself a cowboy hat (as did I), a couple of pairs of boots and some jeans for the daytime. But evening time, she was still the best dressed in the restaurant each evening. Random people kept wandering up to her complimenting her outfits.

(Attachment Link)

On the whole, it seems they are a badly dressed lot in Fort Worth. Most of them look like they got dressed in the dark in whatever shapeless sportswear was lying on the floor from yesterday. That said, especially around the Stockyards area, some girls do dress Western, which is a nice look.

We managed to get plenty of shopping in. Wifey now has a rather nice pair of blue cowgirl boots and a bunch of other Western-type stuff. I availed myself of many pairs of the George Strait edition Wrangler jeans (excellent fit), some nice belts and some Alligator cowboy boots, none of which you can buy in the UK easily. I prefer Boot Barn over Cavenders.

--- End quote ---


Great trip report! Glad to hear you had a good time. Too bad about the weather, at least you didn't go where there were fires or some sort of blizzard with 2 feet of snow.

Steaks are always good and any southern state will do them very good. Did you happen to find a BBQ place near where you stayed or just did steaks and Mexican food?

Although I am in a blue state on the West coast there is a very good BBQ place in the city I live in which has won two national championships. Not been yet but will try it out soon.

Seems to me that the problem with not dressing well anymore when going out is rather common all over the USA now. I think back to how girls in high school always did their nails, hair and dressed quite well when I was in high school and now -- it's entirely different.

The thing about it though is that if someone dresses well now, they often get compliments as you mentioned because it's more unusual.

My favorite place I've been so far was a smaller city in Idaho where it seems every third car had an AK47 or something like it in it. That made me smile, probably similar to when you saw the guy you mentioned.

Other than flying through I've never spent any time in Texas. I enjoyed your review enough to want to visit someday, likely the same area you did.  tiphat


PS... the horse you rode, which tried to buck you off, well did you get him up to a gallop? Maybe that would have made him happy. I always love to ride a fast horse.

Contrarian:
That must have been a fun concert!  :chuckle:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnX2BoZE9w4

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