Texas / Fort Worth / Austin [Part 2]

Continuing my tale of my roadtrip around Texas with my parents, after we left Dallas we went onto Fort Worth. On our way there we visited Southfork Ranch, which was the exterior filming location for the 1970s/80s TV show Dallas. I've never actually seen the show - I only really know its place in pop culture because of the whole 'who shot JR' storyline. My parents, it seems, watched it religiously so they were very excited - it was one of the definite Must Dos on our planning list. There was a lot of reminiscing about forgotten storylines and characters during the visit!

Despite my not fully 'getting' it, it was fun to get to visit an actual Texas ranch, and the lady who ran our tour was very informative and enthusiastic, so that definitely helped.

When we first arrived in Fort Worth it seemed as if the one night that we had there wouldn't be enough, but it turns out there isn't all that much to do there. It had a great cowboy 'look' to it, though. Seeing some actual cowboys rounding up longhorn cattle was a definite highlight.

On our drive down to Austin we stopped at Waco and visited the Dr Pepper museum. It's more of an historical museum and isn't actually affiliated with today's Dr Pepper, so sadly no free samples! It was an educational and fun museum nonetheless.

Austin was my favourite of the four 'big cities' that we did on the trip (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston). It had the most relaxed young vibe, and without nearly as many of the uncomfortable feeling areas that Dallas had.

The state capitol was a gorgeous building (taller than the US Capitol Building in Washington DC, too). The tourist information centre had a great free museum where I got to do one of my favourite things - dress up! If a museum has an area to dress up, I'm usually won over.

(yep, that's my father in the background, pretending not to know me)

Next stop on our Texas tour: LBJ National Historical Park and a little town called Gruene.