Day 74 - Cowtown, USA.......Half way across

Thursday, November 11, 2010

How can you not like a place with the nickname of "Cowtown", a major street paved with red brick,
cows herded by cowboys down the street at mid-day each day, and a Will Rogers Auditorium with a Paint horse show? This is my first big city, and today was like working my way through a corn maze. Lots of walking, but maybe not so much distance covered. But more on that later. My goal today was to reach the halfway point of the trip, and find David Cassteven's house before dark.

Last night was a really good one......nice place to camp, and boy did I sleep well. Up at 6, packed everything, and then headed to the Cowtown RV Park to use their bath facilities. (Thanks to the folks there for allowing me to use them.) On the road around 730 or so. I'm traveling the I-30 service road for part of the trip, not sure about the remainder. It was cloudy today, but never rained where I was.

It wasn't long until the Star-Telegram photographer called me and said he was on the way. He's doing some photos for the newspaper article which will be in the paper on Saturday. We'll link it on the blog for those not in the DFW area. Soon after that David called and he's coming out also. We took the pictures, and David confirmed the invite to stay at his place tonight. The photographer who did the pictures, Ron, told me he wants to walk the Appalachian Trail someday, but has recently had knee surgery, so it'll have to wait a while. I told him I live within shouting distance of the trail, so let me know if he comes east.

They left and I continued walking. Ron came back and told me the service road runs out just up the road and I needed to use Camp Bowie Road instead. That differs from my previous info, but it's the latest, so I'll go with it. For any of you folks in and around Roanoke, Camp Bowie is much like Williamson Road.....wall-to-wall small businesses for many miles. I stopped in a Kroger's to get a new map (lost the old one), a convenience store for breakfast, and a Verizon store to get one of those gadgets that allows the computer to get Internet via the cell phone signals. It's hard to make good time through the city......too many interruptions. But, I kept moving.

Around mid-afternoon David called to coordinate me getting to his house. I still had some miles to go, but should get there about when he's getting off from work. I stopped by a State Farm office to send a message to Michelle, and met a nice woman named Margaret Burke. We talked a while about the walk, and I continued on. Four F16 fighters flew pretty low over where I was, not sure where they took off from, but somewhere nearby. I am almost sure I saw a B1-B bomber fly over a few days back. It has such a distinct silhouette couldn't have been anything else. Kevin: do we still use those planes?

Before long I turned on University Dr, and soon came to the Will Rogers Center, which has an upcoming Paint Horse show. Then not too much farther crossed the Trinity River, and not far after that came to Texas Cristian University, home of the Horned Frogs......which currently are one of the top college football teams in the nation. Before long David arrives and I follow him to his house. His wife Susie soon arrived home from work and we went out to dinner at a place named Charleston's Restaurant. I opted for the catfish dinner with all the trimmings, and pink lemonade. (have to cut back on those soft drinks.) After dinner we went for ice cream, and then back home.

We talked a while, Susie made some cookies for my trip tomorrow, we looked over the blog, and then to bed. Big day tomorrow, continue to work my way through this maze called DFW. Some time tomorrow I'll walk past the new Cowboy's stadium......do I have to bow to Jerry Jones? Then onward toward Dallas. Wayne is coming in on Saturday, so we'll do some stuff.....looking forward to that.