April 10, 2010: Arkansas to Texas

This was my fourth visit to Arkansas. Originally when I did this trip, I wanted to spend some time exploring Little Rock, Arkansas a bit, as well as some of the cities and towns along I-30 in Arkansas (southwest part) going into Texas. But, ultimately Little Rock was just a stopping off point with a very good hotel. I decided to throw my time into Texas instead. Besides, I would be visiting parts of northern Arkansas on the way back so at least I'll get to see a little bit.

Prior to this trip, I had only been to Texas one time. That one time was at most three to five hours during last Fall's trip. I drove down from Oklahoma City, saw a historical site, had BBQ for dinner, and got back up to Oklahoma City for the night. The fall trip had been so compressed and Texas had been at the end of the geographic area I was covering. Before the Fall 2009 trip, I had tried many times to include Texas in a trip and it never worked out.

This time, I got to see and understand a lot more about Texas. The people truly love and are proud of their state. Texas is referred to as the Lone Star State and on many of the bridges, you see a star and outlines of the state. The star, state flag, and outline of the state are constantly visible from the road in the populated areas I visited. The state flag is a simple design with a blue vertical strip including the single star, plus a horizontal red and horizontal white stripe. Many businesses incorporate the design of the flag into their own signs and logos.

My stop for the night was in North Richland Hills, which is a suburb of Fort Worth. I wanted to avoid staying directly in Fort Worth because it's a huge city and I simply prefer small cities and towns. There is also less congestion. I don't mind a city of 200,000 or even 400,000. But beyond that, I just can't deal with the congestion. Fort Worth has an estimated 700,000 people, with Dallas at over 1 million people next door.

It took about six hours to get to the Fort Worth area. Most of the drive was through unpopulated stretches of I-30. I had to pass through Dallas first and then on to Fort Worth. There were numerous traffic jams on the interstates, even on a Saturday.

I spent a lot of time looking around. I didn't try to go into the Stockyards, which is the historic district of Fort Worth, because there was a huge festival going on. It's busy normally but it was likely much busier because of the weekend's events. I didn't even want to try finding a parking space.

For dinner, I went off my Subway diet (because it's cheap, fast, healthy if done right, and available almost everywhere) and had barbecue. This was at Riscky's, which was recommended by the hotel clerk. I can certainly see why. It was absolutely delicious. I liked the BBQ I had last time in Texas, but this one certainly was better.

Overall, I've been very impressed with Texas from this visit. I didn't know a lot about Texas before visiting and didn't pick up much after my Fall 2009 visit due to the short time I had to be there. But I've learned a whole lot more since then.