Bike ride in Fort Worth

On March 6, we rented BCycle bikes from a bike stand near the hotel, and went for a ride.  It took us a while to download the app onto our phones, and figure out how to use it, but once we did the rest was relatively smooth sailing.  The bikes were a little clunky and unbalanced, but I guess they are built to be tank-like due to being minimally-supervised rentals.

This was a lot of fun, especially considering the summer weather, and the fact that it was still winter back home in Canada made it a special treat.

There are lots of trails in Fort Worth.  We got on the path around where W 10th St. meets Forest Park Blvd., and then downtown we crossed over to take the trail that follows the West Fork of the Trinity River, crossing the river again at the dam to stay on the south side of the river curve, and we stayed on it until a little ways past highway 35W before we had to turn around as Ed needed to get back for a meeting.

These next photos are near downtown.  The weather was perfect:

This bridge is the main one into downtown from the north, N Main St.:

Downtown from the path:

This is me just past the 35W interstate freeway.  This was around where we turned around:

This is the dam that we crossed.  That is me on it, Ed hung back to get the photo.  It was a little scary crossing it, it has no railings, and bike traffic in both directions, with a bit of wind too:

That concludes our short little trip to Fort Worth.  We had a great time, and it was our last trip before the pandemic shut-down, so we are really glad we went.

More Fort Worth

On March 3 I got together with an old university friend who has lived in Dallas for the past 20+ years.  She had never been to Fort Worth.  It seems that it's not the norm for people from the two cities to visit the neighbouring one (they are adjoined) very often, if at all.  Well, on this momentous day my friend took the commuter train to Fort Worth, and we strolled around downtown a bit.

Behind the convention center and just down the street from our hotel is the Fort Worth Water Gardens.  This was the most interesting feature, a waterfall down concrete step-like walls.  That is me at the bottom – a winding staircase of huge oversized steps allows visitors to enter the feature.  It's a little disorienting and scary, with the steep-sided waterfall all around, and the water rushing under the steps that have large gaps between them.  I made it though.  That is foam in the middle.

We went to a visitor centre, where they seemed rather surprised to see us.  They recommended a few sights, one of which was the courthouse.  This is looking up at a skylight window in the centre atrium:

Next we walked down to the site of the old fort, where the Clear Fork meets the West Fork of the Trinity River.

Looking back up at Downtown:

This is the ceiling of the old train station, the last destination on our mini-tour of downtown Fort Worth (the downtown isn't very big!):

The station itself is still in use, but the ticket hall has been decommissioned.  These are the doors out to the platforms:

This art is on the way to the platforms, it's in commemoration of the African Americans who worked to build the railway, and then worked as porters, and who now ride it as commuters:

March 4 it rained.  Ed was off in the afternoon and we visited the Sid Richardson Museum, which contains the western art collection that was owned and donated by the Texas oilman.  I didn't take any photos.

On March 5, I walked over to the Museum district and saw the Modern Art museum of Forth Worth, and the Kimball Art Museum.  On the way back, I took these photos of two older downtown buildings:

Next up, Ed and I rent bikes and hit the bike trails of Fort Worth.

George Dubya Bush Presidential Library, and Fort Worth Stockyards

On Monday, March 2, almost everything in Fort Worth was closed.  We rented a car and pointed it towards Dallas, heading to the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

I didn't take many photos there.  Here is one of Ed taking a presidential phone call in the scale replica oval office:

Photo of part of the exhibit space.  It wasn't too crowded:

Ed got a photo with Bushes Junior and Senior in the courtyard afterwards, I am guessing they are a little larger than life:

After the museum, we headed back towards Fort Worth.  I got this photo from the car on the highway, it is of some famous art museum in Dallas, by some famous architect:

At the stockyards, there were some longhorn cattle hanging out:

Some of the historic cattle pens:

The Colosseum:

Every afternoon they have a cattle drive down the main street of the stockyards, we happened to catch it:

Back downtown, we saw this building as we walked to a restaurant for dinner:

After eating, we saw some of the lights around Sundance Square:

Fort Worth

On Sunday, March 1 we went for a walk over to the Museum district of Fort Worth.  On the way we saw this artwork on the edge of downtown, called Man with Briefcase, from 2002.  It's big: 50 feet tall.

We crossed over this bridge at 7th Street over the Clear Fork of the Trinity River:

This is the bridge at West Lancaster Avenue, same fork, same river:

Looking back in the direction of downtown (which is a little beyond these buildings):

A building at the Will Rogers Equestrian Center, in the Museum district:

Outside the Science Museum, were a bunch of Dr. Seuss statues, this is Horton:

We then spent a couple of hours at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.  They had very interesting western collections.  I don't seem to have taken any photos!

Flight to Fort Worth, Texas

On February 29, we took off on our first trip of the year, which due to Covid-19, will probably also be our last trip of the year.  We almost didn't go, as the cases of Covid were just starting to spread in North America at that time, but I did the math and figured we would be almost totally safe still for a one week trip as we were going from a city with no cases to another city with no cases, and that turned out to be true.  The fact that we connected through Toronto was the only worry, but it was early enough in the pandemic (which had not yet been declared) that it wasn't a big concern.  If we had known then just how contagious Covid-19 is, we might not have gone.

But anyway ... that Saturday we took off on our flight to Toronto, and there we transferred onto the plane to take us to the Dallas/Fort Worth airport.  Here are some pictures from that second flight.

We left the land of snow ... this would be suburban Toronto as we took off:

The mouth of the St. Clair River, that is Walpole Island in the foreground:

Passing over Detroit at the other end of Lake St. Clair:

Close-up of downtown Detroit:

Airport in Detroit:

Those aren't clouds in the distance, this is where the "snow line" was on Feb. 29.  To the north the land is snow-covered, and to the south it's bare, with the fields in between covered in a dusting of probably recent snow.  Supposedly we were near Linden, Indiana at this point:

This is probably Lewisville Lake, north of Dallas:

Heading over a warehouse district north of the airport:

I am pretty sure one of these, probably the closer huge one, is an Amazon fulfilment centre according to Google maps:

Highways north of the airport:

So that was our Feb. 29 leap-year flight.  Next up, Fort Worth.