DID YOU KNOW? Fort Worth, Texas is home to a historic stockyard and livestock exchange. During the years after the Civil War up through the late 1870’s. millions of cattle were driven along the Chisholm Trail through Fort Worth. Because of it’s influence on cattle drives, ranching and cattle trading, Fort Worth earned itself the nickname of “Cowtown.” Today, cowboys continue the long tradition of driving longhorn cattle down Exchange Street, the main street of the stockyard district every day at 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Arriving at the stockyards on Thanksgiving, after picking up our sweet Lucy Loo, we hunkered down in their free parking lot for the night, planning to enjoy the next day's festivities after pulling off a Thanksgiving feast that afternoon. In addition to the daily cattle drives, Cowboy Santa was arriving in Fort Worth via a parade on Friday. Christmas lights would line the streets and a number of Old West demonstrations would be happening. Finally, the night would end with a rodeo in the Cowtown Coliseum. We didn't quite realize just how many people there were going to be!
Friday started out with the cattle drive at 11:30 a.m.. We were excited to see some Texas Longhorns up close, since we've been seeing horns displayed all over the place here in Texas...the animals themselves did not disappoint. The two beasts with the longest horns were half-brothers whose horn spans were approximately 10 feet tip-to-tip. If they were allowed to walk side by side down the road, their horns would take up the entire street.
Next up was the Cowboy Santa parade, complete with a toy soldier band, cowboys, a stilt-walking toy soldier and sugar plum fairy, numerous buggies and carriages, and of course... Cowboy Santa himself. Our family has never done Santa Claus over the years, but it was still funny to see a western version of the jolly old fella.
After the parade, we wandered the stockyards amidst the thousands of other people. The littles enjoyed getting their faces painted, and we watched a demonstration on cattle drover life during the Westward Expansion.
We also walked by Billy Bob's...the world's largest Honky-Tonk (whatever that means), where Mom country danced many years ago and actually met John Schneider from the Dukes of Hazard (her celebrity crush from high-school). His band was performing the quiet weeknight she and her friend went to dance, so she had the opportunity to meet him. He suggested they take a picture together on the mechanical bull! Unfortunately, I don't have that picture right now (Mom still has it though!), but she still remembers how fun and rather surreal it was to get a picture with "Bo Duke" all hugged up next to her on a mechanical bull! Lol.... My siblings and I have never watched Dukes of Hazard, but she showed us a few clips and those country boys are pretty insane if you ask me!
Also exciting was when we walked into the John Wayne museum just to see if it was worth exploring (we aren't much for museums in our family) and saw what we thought was a replica of Roy Roger's iconic horse Trigger...except it was the real Trigger himself. Stuffed and mounted, he was displayed alongside Roy's favorite pup, Bullet. This was totally unexpected. I love horses and I love Roy Roger's films... meaning, I especially love Trigger. So to get to see him on display was really neat, once we got over the fact that these weren't just replicas but rather some amazing taxidermy projects.
Shortly after this, we opted to return to the RV for a few hours to spend time with Lucy and Nellie, as well as eat supper before returning for the tree lighting and rodeo. We actually ended up missing the tree-lighting, but still grabbed a few pictures on the way to Coliseum.
The rodeo was enjoyable, although didn't live up to our Cody, Wyoming experience. There was your typical barrel-racing, bronco-busting, bull-riding, and roping events. One main difference was that they had live music during the pre-show, but we missed most of it.
For us, the best part of the rodeo was the half-time show when a Mexican Vaquero showed off his incredible rope-tricks skills. He performed both on and off his horse, and with a normal-length lasso and an extra long rope. We hadn't seen anything like this before, so found it very astonishing how he controlled the rope.
Until next time, God bless!
We've actually been to the cattle drive, a long time ago. It was fun to see you guys on the same street we were! 🐄🐄🐄