Day 10 – “Mammas Don't Let Your Babies…”

“…Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” We spent the day in Fort Worth, a quintessential Texas cowtown.  For 20 years after the end of the civil war, herds of cattle were driven up the old Chisholm Trail through Fort Worth to Abilene, Kansas, where they were shipped by rail back east for processing.  Those cattle drives gave birth to the cowboy in America and when the railroad came to Fort Worth and the cattle drives ended, Fort Worth remained a key meat processing center.

Fort Worth is about a 50 minute drive from our hotel, and we passed by the George Bush Presidential Library (no security today), Six Flags Over Texas, Cowboys Stadium and the Rangers ballpark, the last three all in Arlington.  Fort Worth is a modern city these days and we started with a visit to the Kimbell Museum. The Kimbell is a small museum but it has a surprisingly good collection. 

Texas Longhorns

In the afternoon we went to the Fort Worth Stockyards.  The stockyard was a sprawling area of cattle, hog and sheep pens and meat processing plants, but today is a tourist area with lots of stores, restaurants and Billy Bob’s, the world’s largest bar.  It also has the world’s first indoor rodeo.  We witnessed a longhorn cattle drive down the main street of the stockyard and stayed for the evening rodeo.  The rodeo is always great fun. The team roping event is amazing.  One cowboy ropes the head and a second ropes the “heels”.  That really doesn’t even seem possible.  The cash scramble is also fun.  They send a bunch of young kids from the audience to take a ribbon from a heifer’s tail for a cash prize.  Of course a heifer can easily drag a single kid so it isn't as easy as it seems.