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Published: June 10th 2006
A Texan Ranch style
H3 Ranch in Ft. Worth.OK that sounds inhuman and cruel to describe having a mini vacation while helping out a good buddy Ryan moving to his new place in Dallas, Texas. Moving, like any other unpleasant activities, requires a lot of sacrifices, including but not limited to, driving at least thirteen hours behind a U-Haul truck, sleeping deprived, boredom, lack of movement (no marathon training!), and nutrition malfunction consisting of many Red Bulls, chewing gum, MacDonald’s double cheeseburger and soda pop, just to realize that as soon as arriving at the destination place, instead of having a good rest, still need to haul heavy boxes, oversize furniture, and returning the U-Haul truck to a strange place across an unfamiliar city. It’s not that I have many things to complain about, but all travels always have ups and downs throughout the time being.
Starting the trip noon on Friday from Atlanta, Georgia to Vicksburg, Mississippi, we drove around seven hours to the mid point of the trip. To get there, driving through the width of State of Alabama and Mississippi (and Louisiana on the next day), which got me excited to finally adding two more states in my travel log: Mississippi and Louisiana, adding it
Maverick
Only in Texas ... to about forty states all together.
Vicksburg, Mississippi lies within the shadow of the mighty Mississippi River, just enough to be in the State of Mississippi side. A tad to the west is the State of Louisiana gaping across the river waiting for us to continue on the journey. With a huge expectation to see many famous sites of the Civil War in Vicksburg, we arrived at our Best Western hotel just to find out that the major attraction to the city are many casinos along the mighty Mississippi River. Unless you’re a major Civil War buff that would find the National Military Park in Vicksburg is exciting, nothing else is going on, or at least according to some spoiled city brats like us. Maybe this because we chose a wrong place to have dinner, which turned out to be a disaster?
The second leg of the trip started in Vicksburg, Mississippi the following morning, driving for another six hours through the width of State of Louisiana and Texas. This was when I saw many armadillo roadkills, none I can spot anywhere else but in the southern state.
A state juggernaut* Texas is huge! This
A Lone Star State
A lone star at Chili's, Dallas. is my second time entering Texas from land, and both times, it always hit me hard: there is something about Texas that you couldn’t help but respecting it. About one third of the vehicles running on the roads of Texas, through my observation, are big trucks ala Texas. It’s a state juggernaut all right, with bulky guys in cowboy hats, boots, and tight Wrangler walking around. Girls are not as bad, but still cowgirl-ish looking. If not cowboy theme, it must be a Latino theme, with a group of bilingual Latino-Americans switching back and forth between English and Spanish, both as fluent as it can be.
Dallas and Ft. Worth are considered as one gigantic city, with both as important and as significant in the area. The highlight of Ft. Worth is the Ft. Worth Stockyard, where they traded, marketed and sold cattle and stock in early 1900s. Ft. Worth is where most people would think of Old Western, with wooden houses, cowboys, and ranch style restaurant. Of course it is very commercialized now, with all nick-nack gift shops and theme restaurants.
Dallas, on the other hand, is the modern counterpart of the region. With many tall modern
Thanks, Y'all.
The State of Mississippi slogan. Not too bad. looking buildings, the market for architects and developers is huge here, and both Ryan and myself enjoy looking around the city. After walking around the downtown to check out several "must-to-see sites for designers" such as the newly built W Hotel by the AA Center, the Fountain Plaza by Dan Kiley, and the touristy stuff (such as JFK Memorial and the Streetcar along McKenney street), we managed to figure out how to operate the DART, a Dallas tram system which runs quite intensively throughout the city.
In the middle, Arlington bridges between the two. This is where Ryan goes to school, University of Texas at Arlington for his real estate developer masters degree. After making sure that everything is figured out, finally I flew back to Atlanta on Memorial Day Monday. See you next time.
*
Juggernaut? (for those who was wondering what
juggernaut means: yes, it is an English word. According to Meriam-Webster Online Dictionary:
Main Entry: jug·ger·naut
Pronunciation: 'j&-g&r-"not, -"nät
Function:
noun Etymology: Hindi
JagannAth, literally, lord of the world, title of Vishnu
1
chiefly British : a large heavy truck
2 : a massive inexorable force, campaign, movement, or object that crushes whatever is
American Casino
Vicksburg, Mississippi. That's the Mississippi River. in its path
juggernaut> juggernaut> )
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