Fort Worth

We started out our Sunday morning with pumpkin muffins and then we all got dressed and ready for church. We decided to attend a large Baptist church that was only a few miles down the road from the park. It turned out that they didn't have any kids' classes for the service time that we were attending so Spence and Sky were quite chagrined, since the last place we visited was so fun for them, that they were stuck with the prospect of sitting through the whole service and we hadn't even brought their notepads to draw on. I must say that other than Sky asking me at least 6 times if I had ANYTHING he could do, the two of them did pretty well with Brynna between them on the pew.

The pastor actually taught from the same passage that we'd heard a sermon on last week so that was interesting. I always like it when that happens. It feels like God is saying something all the way around. This week's message had a slightly different twist on the theme so we got something just a little different to take away from it.

After church, we came back to the trailer, where the kids changed in record time and bolted out to the playground to have some more time with their campground friends. They were able to spend a good solid half hour in hard play while the burrito fixins' were being prepared (it is Cinco de Mayo, after all.)

Once we had called them all back in and ate our lunch, we were ready to head out and explore the Fort Worth area. We first went to Camping World to pick up a new hot water faucet handle since ours was stripped out and not working very well. While there we decided to look (again) at trailer stabilizing tools and we finally settled on buying the RV Stabilizer. You have to buy two and you put one under the frame by your entrance door and one under your back bumper. They look cheesy, but are supposed to control wobbles and rocking so we will see how they work.

We left Camping World a little bit poorer, but hopeful that we won't all wake each other up when we get up in the night to use the facilities. Besides just making our RV feel a little more "home-like".

We headed down to the Fort Worth Stockyards because at 4 pm there is a cattle drive right down the old town kind of cobblestone street. We got there and paid $5 to park in a mostly empty parking lot. Every place around there said "Towing Strictly Enforced" so we obeyed the signs. We strolled past Billy Bob's Texas, the World's Largest HonkyTonk, where Trace Adkins had played last night. Once we moseyed down to where the crowds were, we saw lots of little touristy shops. We strolled through them, outside, killing time until we could see the longhorns.

This carriage was for hire, as well as a saddled longhorn across the street that
you could sit on and have your picture taken, but we just watched and were happy with that.

We were actually having fun, though this picture doesn't show it, and the old buildings were cool too.

From the Fort Worth Stockyards website, we learned "For the drovers heading longhorn cattle up the Chisholm Trail to the railheads, Fort Worth was the last major stop for rest and supplies. Beyond Fort Worth they would have to deal with crossing the Red River into Indian Territory. Between 1866 and 1890 more than four million head of cattle were trailed through Fort Worth which was soon known as “Cowtown”... From what I understand, the twice daily weekend "cattledrives" are kind of commemorative of those times. It was pretty neat to walk around in the covered shop area where it's all cobblestones paving the walks and see the rails that the cattle cars would ride on.

When it was finally time for the drive to start, some people came out and made the announcement and the street was closed to traffic and pedestrians were asked to stay on the sidewalk. We were so excited to see them. Finally, they headed round a corner and were coming towards us. Cool! And then it was over, I had failed to read the fine print that the drive consists of marching 15 longhorns down the street about a block and back into their pens. They were pretty magnificent though! Their hornspan can be over 6 feet!

Sitting on a giant belt...cool benches.

We were pretty much done after that and weren't sure what to do with ourselves. Brock researched google and found a yogurt place that had good reviews for quality and price and we drove there. Our navigation took us right into the downtown area which could've been bad, but was actually really cool. There was very little traffic since it was late on a Sunday afternoon and there are some really cool buildings to gawk at on your way through. It was a great way to get to see it.

We arrived at Yogurtland and we all made our masterpieces to be consumed out on a bench in the outdoor area of the Montgomery Plaza, a nice yuppie-ish area. The reviewers were right, our creations turned out to be very reasonably priced given how difficult it is to stifle young creativity when they're in building mode. There were some very unique flavors of yogurt, like Pog, Mexican Hot Chocolate, and Black Sesame Vanilla from Japan, to try. It was fun and I think it might've been our cheapest family yogurt stop ever and it definitely wasn't the smallest.

After yogurt, we still had about an hour and a half before it was time to go pick up Steve, Brock's co-worker, at the airport. He's coming here to get some training during the same HTG conference that Brock will be attending in Dallas this week. We tried to kill a little time looking at the animals at Petsmart which was located just across the parking lot. After that, we just decided to head to the airport since Brock remembered it being a little crazy to navigate there. 

It took us about a half hour to drive there and we actually ended up finding free one hour parking right where Steve would be exiting the building. We sat in the car for alittle while since it wasn't yet time for his plane to land. We finally got the call and he walked right up to us and got in. 

We started for the area of the hotel he will be staying in and talked about where to go for dinner. We talked about all kinds of exotic possibilities, but not knowing the area, we decided to settle on something familiar and headed for Olive Garden. We all enjoyed our meals based on happy plates and enjoyed getting to visit with Steve. The kids did great with their behavior which was a pleasant surprise after some unpleasantness earlier in the day. ;O)

Blurry picture, but full bellies and happy faces.

We dropped Steve off at his hotel and started back towards the state park. The kids were up waaay late, but they were cheerful all the way home and everyone was ready for bed when we climbed the trailer steps. (All exept for Heidi, that is, because she had spent the whole second half of the day cooped up alone and she was ready for her dinner and some serious play time.) She got only about 5 minutes of ball chases in the trailer and then I had to apologize and tell her good night. She very maturely acquiesced and climbed onto her bed for the night. She might turn out to be a good dog after all.