The drive from Amarillo to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area is an easy one. All 340 miles are on Interstate 40, and the biggest challenge is remembering to stay in the right lane. (Traffic laws prohibit the use of the left along many stretches, unless you’re passing.) We’re looking forward to an early arrival in Ft. Worth, and even decide we have enough time for an early-morning jaunt to Happy.
Seriously. When Happy is officially only 10 miles away, how can you not seek it out?
Accordingly, off we go, bright and early in the morning. With an official population of only 647 residents, we figure the town of Happy, TX will be pleased to welcome two more people and a dog, should we choose to relocate once this roadtrip is a wrap.
Unfortunately, Happy doesn’t really live up to its billing. It’s one more glum chicken-scratch on the great American map: some dusty fields, an empty intersection, and a large water tower providing the sole scenic point in five square miles.
With a snapshot for posterity, we’re off to Ft. Worth…after one more pit stop at the I-40 roadhouse/ steakhouse/tourist extravaganza called the Big Texan. It’s a lengthy one, but necessary. This place is larger than life in every way. It can swallow the contents of 10 tour busses and not even feel crowded. It’s a motel as well as a restaurant—and though I didn’t specifically confirm this, the restaurant/bar side seems as large as the 54-room lodging house painted to look like a pioneer-town Main Street.
It’s famous as the place with the 72-ounce steak—which goes for free to anyone who can eat the whole thing in an hour. (You may have seen it featured on Man Vs. Food.) Though that’s obviously the most jumbo thing on the menu, the dessert selections are also oversized and fit to feed four or more. That’s possibly because Big Tex does a booming business as a candy counter, with plenty of people ordering nothing but a sundae, a pound of fudge, or a cocktail.
We arrive in time for the breakfast buffet, forego a breakfast steak, but line up at the candy counter for pralines to take with us. We don’t visit the live rattlesnakes, but we do stop by the arcade shooting game. On the way out, a pack of 20-something guys stop us to ask about the Kizashi, which we’ve parked next to the fleet of Big Texan limousines. They seem baffled by the idea of a car that’s come all the way from Tokyo, Russia and the Yukon. We don’t exactly blame them. In the parking lot of the Big Texan, it seems inconceivable that there could possibly be a world outside Texas.
This feeling persists as we fall in line with the big rigs and big shiny Ford trucks, for hours upon hours of steady 70MPH driving. We pass ranches where Texas longhorns graze peacefully, and one-stoplight towns populated by only a few hundred people, and 18-wheelers bearing cargo from all the big brand-name stores.
For a while we travel alongside the railroad tracks, and although it happens many times, it’s always a thrill to see the trains pass by us, endless cars long, heading toward the West.
As we get near Wichita Falls, we start to see a few solitary little oil drills at work in the fields. They’re a common sight out here, and while the endless rows of them out in Odessa and Midland can be somewhat eerie, a single one is scenic and charming in a weird way—like a giant sewing machine on a five-acre swath of fabric.
We reach Ft. Worth by early evening, and are pleasantly surprised by its historic downtown center, which is colorful and compact and quite walkable. We’re staying in the pet-friendly Renaissance Worthington in Sundance Square, but for dinner, we head to the Stockyards, Ft. Worth’s historic preservation area.
Once upon a time this area was slaughterhouse central for Texas “beeves” but now, it’s all steakhouses and honkey-tonks and Western shops . We wind up the night in Booger Red’s Saloon, drinking Buffalo Butt beers and taking photos of the awesome décor—which includes several animal heads, a lady mannequin wearing a bra, and a badger in a Santa Hat hanging upside down from the ceiling. It’s a lot to take in, but luckily, we’ll have another day to do it. We’re staying in Dallas/Ft. Worth for another night to take care of important Stock Show/Super Bowl research.
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