Amtrak Adventures – Cowboy Land

This is the travel journal of two British girls travelling across the great expanse of North America. Spending most of that time on very slow trains…

Fort Worth, Texas

The train was delayed getting to St. Louis so despite running around the city like nutcases trying to get to the station on time, we really shouldn’t have bothered. Two hours of sitting in a desolate waiting room made us bizarrely keen to jump on the Texas Eagle for another overnight trip.

Arrived in Fort Worth around 2pm and took a taxi to our motel. Our driver was a curious character with long white beard and hair and a car full of junk. He cracked a joke or two (“Are you guys from South Alabama? You don’t sound local.”) and informed us that what he’d seen of British people he didn’t think we were that great. We tried to assure him the whole country wasn’t full of Simon Cowells and Piers Morgans but he didn’t look convinced. His parting shot was that yet again we’d booked ourselves into a motel in Dodgy-ville and he basically told us never to leave the room alone or at night. Yey.

This glowing endorsement ringing in our ears we headed straight out of there and out to the Stockyards area of the town. The stockyards were brilliant – just like something out of a Western movie. You could tell it had a tourist sheen but neither of us had seen a town like it before so lapped it up. Went to Cattleman’s steak house where Martina tried her first EVER steak. I was in heaven with my steak and although it cost the same as two of our normal dinners on this trip it was so worth it. The staff were so touched and surprised that Martina had never had a steak before that they gave her some memorabilia postcards – such lovely people.

The next day I had a run in with the motel staff… The temperature outside was still really hot and as an ex-competitive swimmer I was gasping for a decent swim. We had chosen this motel because it was cheap with a pool (albeit by the freeway…). So in the morning I jumped in and did a few laps. Minutes later the manager came over waving a piece of paper at me. Apparently the pool had been closed down by the health authorities… Oops.

After this mishap we headed back into the centre of Fort Worth. We continued our eating tour of America with a burger in a diner and then an incredibly sickly ice cream at a ‘Creamery’ (this was a totally new phenomenon for us Brits – never heard of a creamery before). Alas our gorging made us feel a little sick. Slowly but surely, we headed back to the Stockyards for more cowboy fun. Had some drinks in an old-style saloon and then finished the night at Billy Bob’s Texas – the world’s largest honky tonk. This place defies all description. But it was brilliant. There were several bars, interspersed with pool tables, slots, a restaurant, gig venue and bull ring. We watched a bull riding rodeo which didn’t do much for us, but was clearly a big deal for others. We then watched people dancing with gusto to country songs. It was a really jovial, friendly atmosphere and you could see why it was such a popular place. I’m sure we would have danced if we had known the music or the steps but everyone seemed far too good for us to join them.