Friday 18th November – Fort Worth

Despite our late night, we were up in good time for a short drive to explore Fort Worth, just to the West of Dallas.  This is the only place in the US where you can still see the famous but now rare long-horn cattle being driven down the street by genuine cowboys two times a day.  There were fewer cattle than I was expecting so it wasn’t the grandest of spectacles!  But each long horn cow is completely original as all of their markings and horns are unique:  

We went on from there to view a live cattle auction taking place.  Although it was electronic, so there were no actual cattle there only photographs, I have never seen so many cowboy hats in one room! 
The most entertaining part was the auctioneer’s ‘patter’ as he garbled his way through each sale.  We could barely understand a word but the cowboys in the room clearly knew what was going on!  

(shame I'm having trouble getting the video on this blog working otherwise you could hear for yourselves!)

The Visitor’s centre had given us free passes to go into Billy Bob’s Texas Honky Tonk bar – yet another point for the VCs! The scale of this bar is not to be understated – it is a massive, mostly open-plan building but with a number of stages, a bull riding ring (no, I’m not a fan) and multiple bars.  Some of the greatest country music stars have played here and left signed musical instruments for display. 

Willie Nelson's signed acoustic guitar (bull ring in background)

Model of Longhorn cow in cowboy boots because..... why not?!

From there it was on to find Fort Worth Air Force Base (our second AFB!).  We headed to the general area hoping to sneak a view at one or two planes.  Who’d have thought the best place to see flight after flight of military aircraft in Fort Worth is….. Walmart car park!! From just through the fencing we could sit on the RV and watch F16s, F22s and AWACs (Possibly stands for 'Airborne warning and Control'??!). 

AWAC, you know - the one with the silly knob on top of it....

I tore myself away from the plane-spotting to do some grocery shopping.  Imagine my surprise to find that my credit card was declined AGAIN!!  No messing this time, I went straight on to Twitter to get it sorted again and sat in the car park until I got my call back so that Simon could keep enjoying the planes.  Talking to the Halifax was made slightly more complicated when taking passing jet aeroplanes into consideration!  But thankfully it was resolved there and then.  Which was lucky considering that we had almost run out of cash so needed the credit card working to be able to withdraw more money before we could move to our chosen campsite that night.  
We came up with a theory of why my card kept getting declined.  At gas stations you always have to pre-pay for your fuel, either by going in to the kiosk or by using a card if a ‘pay at pump’ option was available.  Obviously pay-at-pump is much quicker and easier so we’d used that where possible, but a couple of times when I swiped the card I have been asked for the zip code that the card is registered to which of course, I do not have! And you can’t enter a British postcode so must cancel the transaction and pay in the kiosk after all.  I’m guessing the cautious people at Halifax find it somewhat suspicious when a card is swiped and then the transaction is cancelled.  The upshot is that we now don’t take any chances when paying for gas and always have to go into the kiosk to pay with a PIN code or signature.  It adds time but, to date, the card hasn’t been declined again and long may that be the case!

The delay sorting this out meant that it was totally dark when we reached our chosen cheap PA campsite (only $8.50!) for the night and there was NO ONE about.  The only vehicle parked on the sparse lot was a lorry and there was no response on the phone.  So, we just helped ourselves to an electric hook-up, shut the curtains and settled down for the night after some home-made cooking.