We drove another 300 miles this morning, arriving in Texas at lunch time. It's amazing how easy it is to cover fairly large distances over here. The weather is so good and the traffic so light that it was simply great fun to crank up some tunes and cruise on in to Dallas.
Signs on the roads in this part of the United States have a tendency to combine religious messages with sales promotions. So you get stuff like 'Jesus is the answer. Budget RVs next three exits'. There are also some terrific names given to towns out here. I was more than a little curious to take the exit that said 'Fate, 1 mile'.
We stopped for lunch at a Sonic drive-in restaurant; the kind of retro deal where they roller skate to your car with the order. We all had burgers the size of small children. I washed mine down with a strawberry milkshake that was so tasty, I went inside to shake hands with every employee.
We arrived in Dallas in the early afternoon. Driving up Houston Street and taking the sharp right onto Elm, we found ourselves recreating the chilling and eerily familiar Presidential parade route taken by the Kennedy motorcade on November 22, 1963. We parked up outside of the Sixth Floor Museum housed in the former Texas Book Depository. It was from the sixth floor window of this building that Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired the fatal shots that killed Kennedy. These days, it's a museum, so we went inside to take the tour.
Although we were not allowed to take photographs or to film inside the museum, we can report that the tour was fascinating and well worth the price of admission. Dealey Plaza hasn't changed much at all in the years since the assassination. We wandered about on the famous Grassy Knoll and took some photos.
Afterwards, we headed into the shopping areas of Dallas. We found a shop selling belt buckles, lassos and ten gallon hats. It offered such diverse choice in cowboy boots, I thought I had walked into Jon Bon Jovi's closet. As it was Loll's birthday, I bought her an authentic Texan hat. We then celebrated with an excellent steak dinner in the Y.O. Ranch Steakhouse. I wasn't driving, so Johnnie Walker Blue Label made an appearance during dessert.
Dallas is stunning at night. The buildings rise up out of the landscape like some kind of futuristic Delta City. We found the driving a bit hairy on the roads leading in and out though. For example, we joined the freeway and had to exit from the left lane almost immediately. That doesn't sound too bad until you consider that there were five or six lanes. Grab your socks and 'hose and turn!
Sooze happened to be at the wheel for this particular set of road games and she handled it with the same ease that she affords her reverse spinning roundhouse kicks. Before we knew it, we were back on the open road. At 10pm, still 82 degrees, we began crossing deep into the heart of the Lone Star state.
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