On the Road Again

Nothing like a little Willie - one of several Austin music heroes - to get me thinking about a roadtrip. We took one over Memorial Day up to Ft. Worth. Before moving to Texas, I knew Ft. Worth primarily as the last two letters in the airport abbreviation. But then the other day NPR ran a little segment on how Dallas and Ft. Worth compete over who has the better museums, art galleries, music, and food scene. So we thought we would check it out.

Notice from this nice little map (taken from a UK travel site, which must account for the dropped 'S' in what they referred to as a province, not a state) just how convenient it is to get from Austin to some nearby big cities, like San Antonio, Ft. Worth, Dallas, and Houston. What remains to be seen is whether or not these places are worth the trip. That is what we set out to discover:

Ft. Worth is a 3-hour drive from Austin, make that 4 if you stop, as we did on the way home, for BBQ. I think Tom Robbins set his book in Washington, but it could have been here because the roadside attractions along the interstate were many and odd. Most disturbing were the pro-life billboards. Clearly, we had left Austin behind. Another sign that we were in a more conservative region was the beer selection at the Rudy's along the way, almost all Budweiser products with just a slim half dozen Shiner Bocks; to top it off, we were among the very few folks who grabbed cold ones of any brand with our Memorial Day meal.

We stayed in the Omni, a new hotel downtown. The hotel was nice, although its nationally-renown restaurant was over-priced. Lots of other fun places to eat in town. Many of them were booked up due to a pro-golf tournament in town (we were mere feet away from Vijay Singh in our hotel lobby, which made my husband happy), plus a big opera festival. But we made it to Joe T. Garcia's, kind of a local attraction with wickedly strong Mexican martinis, and to Ol' South Pancake House. Now that was a cultural trip: a big mural on the wall showing a plantation scene of a large estate home and rolling hills (no cotton), white Texas middle-aged women waitresses, Hispanic busboys, and a single Black family as customers. I don't really think of Texas as the south, even though it joined the Confederacy. Texas is just Texas. So the pancake house was a bit surreal, but locals and tourists raved about it, so we went and I agree, the German pancake loaded with lemon juice and confectioner's sugar was very tasty. The pancake was German because many Germans settled central Texas, which brings me right back to my own cultural heritage, being Pennsylvania Dutch. You leave but you never go away, apparently.

Our first stop was the Ft. Worth zoo, which has a tremendous reptilian exhibit called the Museum of Living Art. We liked that more than the safari exhibit with its African animals, of which they have many. Having just been to Uganda and seeing these animals roaming free, we had to ponder that maybe our Uganda trip has ruined zoos for us. Also very good, especially with kids, is the Museum of Science and History, which has a large, well-designed discovery area. We spent a good hour or so creating domino trails (world record: 4.8 million, our personal best: somewhere under 30), electrical circuits, and shadows in the shadowbox.

Right beside this museum (everything is grouped together in a "cultural district," which is convenient) is the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. Now this is one piece of cultural work. They have a fine display of rodeo outfits (think rhinestones and needlepoint) and a detailed photo/video history of rodeo women.

Less clear is their narrative around ranch women and everyday cowgirls. They play a short movie that claims every woman is a cowgirl, a rather odd assertion born by a disconcerting combination of Republican individualism and ranch country feminism.We were lucky: they were running a Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit downstairs, with lots of her sketches and photos of her on camping trips in New Mexico.

Finally, we also went over to the stockyards. Ft. Worth is one of the few cities where they still run a herd of cattle through the streets to and from pasture. They go twice a day, presumably out and back, at 11:30 and 4. Of course, we landed up at 4:10 (turns out high school graduation was in the convention center near our hotel, the streets blocked with proud parents) and missed the whole show, who knew cowboys were punctual? But the surrounding area was intriguing for kids and sufficiently cowboy-ish, the Ft. Worth tourist equivalent of San Francisco's Pier 39.

Overall, we give the city a big thumbs-up. It was damn hot over the weekend, which made the zoo trip a challenge and made our daughter reluctant to ever leave the hotel pool. We'll go back sometime in the fall, and make our dinner reservations in advance.