Stark Adventures

Wednesday, April 17, 2024:

Spending the night at:  Willow Draw Campground at Monahans Sandhills State Park west of Odessa Texas

$23.00/night for pull-through site #3 including 50 amp power and water. We’re on a bit of an uphill. Sites 10,11,12 are big and level pull-throughs. One of those would be a good choice for next time.
Weather- hot, dry, clear now but was a lil hazy getting here through Midland and Odessa: 
 Hi 93, low 58, Humidity Hi 20%, low 5%. Yep – it be DRY like a biscuit here!

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Sunday, April 14, 2024:

Spending the night at:  Cousin Steve & Carol’s lovely home in Springtown Texas, near Fort Worth
Weather- clear, warm & sunny, and not too humid today.

Free parking next to the house with 50 amp power! The only curvey driveway in the whole neighborhood, but my professional driver (remember that Paul James guy?) got this big rig in here.

We had a super fun day! We got up SOOOOPER early for us… like BEFORE the sun?? WHAT?! Yep – I was up at 6:00 making coffee and putting things away inside. It started to get light about 6:30, Kenny got up, and we got busy getting things put away outside, got Nitro hooked up, Henry & Nitro pulled forward, Kawi loaded, everything closed up, and on our way by 7:30. We tried to be quiet being so early, but at least there were only three other campers within sight of our spot, so I don’t think we bothered anyone. We wanted to get to Steve’s as early as possible because he had an adventure planned for us.

I had to quick plan our route to get kitty corner to the west of Fort Worth from our current location. I checked the google and the truckmap, synced them up and away we went. Welp…. it took us on this skinnyass squiggly road! Sheesh! For about 16 miles we had to pray for no large on-coming traffic. We made it, then eventually got onto I-35, then a few more country roads and survived our journey. I don’t know why even the trucker map sent us this way. I’d expect it from the google, but dang it was a skinny road.

We were welcomed to Texas along the way. This makes, what….the sixth state, unless you count the 14 minutes in Tennessee, then that makes this the 7th.

We arrived at Steve’s, got Nitro parked and even plugged into 50 amp power! Woo-hoo! And by the way, there have been no blue light/green light issues in Nitro, so that whole rigamaroll at the last campground was apparently something wonky with the power pedestal there. Whew!
We had a quick glass of peach iced tea, took a potty break, then all piled into Carol’s car and headed to the Stockyards in Fort Worth for some fun festivities. It’s not any longer ‘stockyards’ like where cows are being held for butcher, but it is a historic place that used to be a huge trading post for cattle. Now it’s a big shopping area with restaurants and a daily cattle parade of Texas Longhorns. Seriously!

This huge building housed all kinds of shops and eateries. We had some tasty smash burgers here after strolling through a bunch of shops.

There were several big ol’ cows standing around with saddles on for photo-ops. They said the picture was free, but it cost $10 to get off of the cow.

I goofed up when I handed Steve my phone and it was on the portrait setting… so I’m in focus, but not the big cow. Oh well. The critter could actually be a cow or a bull because both girl and boy longhorns grow horns.

The Live Stock Exchange was once one of the greatest cattle markets in the world.

At 4:00 we had a Longhorn parade! The cowboys rode along the edges of the sidewalks to help keep the cattle in order. Some of these critters had such long horns! The announcer said that the horns can grow as long as ten feet across! The one on the right looked like it was really tired of holding up those giant horns. Talk about a chronic neck-ache!

Right after the parade there was a gunfight in the big mall building. We went in to watch, but I got really light-headed and had to sit down, so I never got to see who got shot. Bummer.

After all the excitement, I bought a bottle of water thinking maybe I was just dehydrated, and we walked to Billy Bob’s Texas.

Reportedly, this is the world’s largest honky tonk. IT. WAS. HUGE!!

And I mean huge! over 100,000 square feet and a capacity of over 6,000 people?? HOLY LONGHORN!

There were several very long bars, pool tables, a whole huge area with long tables and chairs with a stage… the place went on forever. There were hundreds of plaster type hand-prints of music artists that have performed on the stage here, from Johnny Cash to Rascal Flatts to Hootie and the Blowfish, and on an on.

There was even a bull riding arena at one end of the building. Crazy!

We found some chairs for a minute and I actually got a selfie of the four of us.

The building was originally an open air barn for housing cattle back in 1910 for Fort Worth’s live stock show. It was enclosed in 1936 and contained 1257 animal stalls and a 1200 seat auction ring (now the bull riding arena). In the 1950’s the building was converted to a huge department store. In 1981 it was converted to its current 120,000 square foot entertainment complex with 40 bar stations.

What a fun trip to the Fort Worth Stockyard! We had a fun time, and it was a long day since we started before the sun woke up this morning. Steve and Carol are morning people so they go to bed much earlier than us, which was good for us today. We decided to just stay in Nitro with our own bed and pillows rather than drag a bunch of stuff into their house. And with being plugged in to their power, we can run our own air conditioning, so that is working out nicely.

Monday, April 15, 2024:

Spending a 2nd night at Steve & Carol’s.
Weather was cloudy with a chance of rain all day. Temp hi of 75, low of 69, humidity high of 88%, low of 77%, and breezy. It was very humid but the breeze made it bearable and not too sticky. There had been a chance of thunderstorms and hail, but that dissipated before it arrived in this area, thank goodness. Hail on Nitro, with his solar system on the roof would have been really bad. We saw a car with hail damage yesterday, and it was awful.

I spent the morning figuring out what we’re going to do and where we’re going to go and stay when we leave here. I had some initial ideas when we first started the trip, but then I got to second guessing some other options. The weather west of here looks like it’s going to be windy on Tuesday, so we asked if we could stay here until Wednesday. No problem they say!! Awesome, because we don’t like driving in the wind. While I was planning, Carol invited me to use her washer & dryer, so I got some laundry done. YAY! Steve had a contractor coming today to start work on installing an irrigation system, so we spent the afternoon out on the back patio watching the fellas work while we visited. They have a huge yard which actually goes all the way out to that little shed, but he’s only putting irrigation in on the dirt part this year.

This is cute – on their little pool house.

As I did my planning, I decided that rather than riding Kawi in New Mexico, we should go farther south and see Big Bend National Park. We’ve never been there, and might as well add it to our list of National Parks visited. Then we’ll head to Quartzsite Arizona to spend some time with Kenny’s parents. I got all of the route planning, places to stay, and reservations made for the next week taken care of. Whew!

Tuesday, April 16, 2024:

Spending a 3nd night at Steve & Carol’s.
Weather was warmer and mostly sunny. Temp hi of 86, low of 66, humidity high of 90%, low of 21%. Quite pleasant!
Carol and I went to the grocery store so that I could stock up on a few things, and then we pretty much just relaxed all day and watched the irrigation work progress. This was an interesting machine where the augers rolled the dirt back into the trenches. It was interesting to watch all the stuff they were doing.

Around 5:00 we went out to a local joint for some barbeque. When we pulled up, I saw this big smoker and knew we were in for a treat.

Fireside BBQ and grill. Kenny laughed a little at the menu because you can get smoked meat or chicken fried steak. Well, it is the south, y’all. We all had a good meal of really nicely smoked meat – brisket, ribs, turkey, sausage. Yum! The tater tots were dehydrated and awful, but the meat was amazing, and we have enough in our left over box to feed us another meal.

Back home after dinner, with our after dinner drinks in hand, we went to the back fence to visit with the neighbor’s farm animals. They have goats, including a baby with the tiniest little baaa voice, a horse, a hee-haw Eeyore donkey, and a Highland Coo! (Pronounced ‘cow’ in American English). He was so fluffy!

The sunset was especially pretty, and this is one of the reasons that they bought this house – because it has a beautiful view of the west for sunsets.
That about wraps up our visit with Steve & Carol. It’s been a very relaxing respite. We’ll try to get out of here before 9:00 in the morning, which is when the irrigation crew shows up. What a fun visit!