The original plan for Trip 7 – Dallas/Fort Worth and Northeast Texas – was for it to be one of the most ambitious of the 254 county trips, in terms of distance and counties covered. Because of time constraints, and weather, I had to shorten it by taking out 8 counties.
Three of those counties – Dallas, Rockwall, and Tarrant – are huge metropolitan areas, which I always try to do on weekends – driving a big motorcycle into a strange urban setting is not amusing, nor is trying to find a photo vantage point that is not cluttered with citizens and/or restricted by police.
I had been trying, weekend after weekend, to do a two-day leisurely run up to the DFW area, but every single weekend there was rain. I was going to try again on the weekend of 13-14 October, but rain was predicted. I scrapped Saturday, but woke up the morning of Sunday the 14th and it was dry – and predicted to be dry all day – so I decided to roll the dice and see if I could get up there on the new Indian before the rain set in.
So this trip was just the opposite of all the others, in which the county courthouse is just a means to an end, the end being to see Texas. For this trip-let, I went out on a mission: to photograph those three courthouses! Here was the plan:
It happened. It took me 11 hours of driving the Indian, and covered 566 miles, but it got done. Evidence follows…
There’s only one way to make time and distance in Texas, and that’s on the Interstate. I left Wimberley in fog and mist, and headed straight for I35, which I then followed north until I had to make a decision about where to go first. Naturally, I made the wrong choice, forgetting that the Dallas Cowboys were playing at Arlington (between Dallas and Forth Worth) in the early afternoon.
I went to Dallas, great American city and seat of Dallas County, first:
There was a demonstration going on, but the demonstrators very politely cleared a spot for me to get my photo! I had never been to Dallas before – I’m from Houston, so Dallas is enemy territory – but I was impressed at how nice an urban environment it is. Near the courthouse was, apparently, the OLD Dallas county courthouse, now a museum:
Here’s a list of some of the more surprising people to have come from Dallas:
Troy Aikman, Erykah Badu, Clyde Barrow, Melinda Gates, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Norah Jones (her mother lives here in Wimberley), Jayne Mansfield, Steve Miller (Steve Miller Band), Dennis Rodman, Boz Scaggs, Stephen Stills, Sly Stone, Stevie Ray Vaughan (and brother Jimmy), Owen Wilson…and it goes on and on.
Speaking of going on and on, I got back on the Indian and headed east on I30, crossing the enormous Lake Ray Hubbard, en route to Rockwall, seat of the county of the same name. Rockwall seems like a suburb of Dallas, and is the smallest county in Texas. The courthouse is going to need some landscaping for some years to come – it looks a little forlorn out there all by itself…
Now I had to pay the piper – I had to get back on I30 and drive all the way back across Dallas, through Arlington, to get to Fort Worth, seat of Tarrant County. I had to do that about an hour before kick-off for the Dallas Cowboys home game against the Minnesota Vikings – and sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic for…a long time. It was worth the wait, though – Fort Worth is a fine little city, and its courthouse area is as impressive as any in the state of Texas:
After a quick drive through Fort Worth, I headed out on I30 to the west, with the idea that I could perhaps go to four counties west and south of Fort Worth. However, the weather, which had been threatening all day, got VERY dark in the west, and the weather app showed very heavy weather moving in the same direction I was heading. So, for once, I did the right thing and turned back south toward Wimberley. It was still a dramatic drive, but I never got wet!
So the mission was accomplished. I got the three remaining urban counties, and got home alive and dry, but tired.
Five more counties to go to complete the original Trip 7…
Now a total of 13,500 miles, 240 counties done and 14 to go. No counting chickens, though… But here’s the map after a L O N G trip for 3 counties!
