Our first stop of the day was the Dallas Farmer's Market, where local farmers (as well as some non-local produce dealers) hawk their fruits and veggies in some big open barns. You walk around to all of them, and they offer you samples of their tasty fruit, most of it incredibly delicious and sweet. We ended up getting a bag of mushrooms, corn, and strawberries there.
Afterwards, we decided to finally exercise our lazy asses (constant sitting in a car + delicious Southern cooking is putting us on the path to becoming a statistic in the obesity epidemic) so we rented bikes and took a 10-mile ride around White Rock Lake.
Afterwards, we went to RJ's Mexican in the West End to get some lunch.
We took a quick detour to a local mall, where we got Roy some more clothes (he only had 1 pair of shorts, which was not enough). Then we headed off to Fort Worth, AKA Cowboytown. We wanted to see some cowboys, so we went to the Historic Stockyards District.
There, we visited several cowboy clothing shops in an attempt to find me a suitable cowboy hat. We were surprised to find that real cowboy hats are rather expensive - the cheapest straw hats
were about $40 each, going up to $100, and the nice felt hats (which we saw almost no one wearing anyway) went for something like $170 dollars. Unfortunately, the shopkeepers deemed my head too round for the hats off the rack. Ultimately, I settled for a $18 tourist hat.
They also had tons of cowboy boots there.
Afterwards, we went to look at the cattle being kept in their pen at East Exchange. They cattle are driven daily at 10:00am and 4:30pm by the cowboys through the street. Unfortunately we had missed the driving, but we still got to see them peering at us through the slats of their pen.
We browsed through the touristy boutiques, and ended up buying over a pound of various taffy candies from this store (they had flavors like Mango, Sweet Pear, Peaches and Cream, etc).
There, we visited several cowboy clothing shops in an attempt to find me a suitable cowboy hat. We were surprised to find that real cowboy hats are rather expensive - the cheapest straw hatswere about $40 each, going up to $100, and the nice felt hats (which we saw almost no one wearing anyway) went for something like $170 dollars. Unfortunately, the shopkeepers deemed my head too round for the hats off the rack. Ultimately, I settled for a $18 tourist hat.
They also had tons of cowboy boots there.
Afterwards, we went to look at the cattle being kept in their pen at East Exchange. They cattle are driven daily at 10:00am and 4:30pm by the cowboys through the street. Unfortunately we had missed the driving, but we still got to see them peering at us through the slats of their pen.
We browsed through the touristy boutiques, and ended up buying over a pound of various taffy candies from this store (they had flavors like Mango, Sweet Pear, Peaches and Cream, etc).
Finally, after a quick burger at nearby Riscky's, we went to see a rodeo!
The rodeo at the Stockyards happens every week on Friday and Saturdays at 8pm. Tickets cost $15 for adults and treats you to about an hour and a half of live cattle roping and riding, as well as some other miscellaneous entertainment.
The rodeo starts, traditionally, with the national anthem. This girl carried the flag on horseback. Then, her job for the rest of the rodeo was to carry the flags of various sponsors (Coca Cola, Coors, Dodge, etc) during various breaks in the rodeo, essentially acting as a live commercial.
Some activities during the rodeo:
Bull riding! They have to stay on for 8 seconds using only one hand. Most of them failed. Only 2 cowboys were able to do this throughout the night, and 1 of them was DQ'd because his other hand touched the bull.
The rodeo at the Stockyards happens every week on Friday and Saturdays at 8pm. Tickets cost $15 for adults and treats you to about an hour and a half of live cattle roping and riding, as well as some other miscellaneous entertainment.
The rodeo starts, traditionally, with the national anthem. This girl carried the flag on horseback. Then, her job for the rest of the rodeo was to carry the flags of various sponsors (Coca Cola, Coors, Dodge, etc) during various breaks in the rodeo, essentially acting as a live commercial.
Some activities during the rodeo:
Bull riding! They have to stay on for 8 seconds using only one hand. Most of them failed. Only 2 cowboys were able to do this throughout the night, and 1 of them was DQ'd because his other hand touched the bull.
Individual tie-down. The cowboy has to get the lasso around the cow's head, and then, as their horse pulls the rope, tie three of the feet together. I think we had someone do this in 9 seconds or so, but the best time they've had is around 8 seconds. (The guy in the video was kind of slow - 24 seconds or so.)
Team tie-down. The first cowboy ropes the head (or horns) while the second does the two back legs.
Finally, they had a couple of random events where they invited kids into the arena and made them chase animals with ribbons tied to them. The kid who got the ribbon got a prize. They did this with a cow and a sheep. The cow gave them a good run around the arena, but unfortunately the movie came out too blurry to post. The poor sheep, however, meekly ran from one end of the arena to the other, and patiently waited at the gate to be let through,
causing it to be mobbed by a bunch of grubby kiddie fingers.
After the rodeo, it was already about 10pm, so we headed back to Dallas and called it a night. We had a long drive ahead of us the next day.
LOL @ SHEEP
ReplyDelete