Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Nashville in October

An early morning trip from our downtown Dallas Hotel to the airport. Dallas airport is big – you gotta know which terminal to get dropped at. We wanted terminal E, unfortunately an Australian E sounds too much like an American A – or an American A means a few more dollars when all along it was American E. Learning experience, taxis and airports = money. This extra few minutes also added to what we thought would be ample time at the airport to “why don’t you have more people checking bags”. Our we would have time to grab some breakfast at the airport ended up being no time for nothing. The flight out of Dallas was fine with AA, except as we are not their frequent flyers we get whatever seat allocation is left which means I was close to the front and Caroline was in the last row. Not too much of a problem except we again had no time for nothing at our interchange at Charlotte and our terminal being nowhere near the one we landed at. Again a very nice flight this time on American Eagle.

Landed at the very peaceful, laid back, relaxed Nashville and yes, went for the taxi + airport, which was actually very good. We were staying in the Vanderbilt area, which is about half an hour walk from what Nashville is renown for – honky tonk bars and country music. We’d done Nashville before so didn’t need to hit the bars – we could stay up our end of town, which is the university end of town so plenty of bars of its own. Our hotel was the Aloft which is a hipster kind of place and very nice – that nice the maid did not even take our tip. But the barmaid did add a couple of beers to our tab which I’d already paid cash for – she was very apologetic and the jack daniels pour made up for it.

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Dallas

Left Austin and headed back north to Dallas (Tuesday 13 October). We’ve been to Dallas before so didn’t need to do the touristy things, and anyways, I was at the Association of Professional Dog Trainers (USA) conference for the Wednesday through to Saturday so no time. Dropped the rental off at Avis and unfortunately it was one notch from being full so we had to drive round the block to 7-11 for a fill-up (or pay over $20 for a tank – yes folks, $20 for a full tank). This was easily achieved, only cost a couple of bucks and an experience. This 7-11 was like the one you’d see in the movies in some seedy part of town – a cop car parked out the front (for looks maybe because it was still there the next day), homies fillin’ up next to red-necks, hooker ’round the corner struggling to stand up – ah, America it is just like the movies. (The picture is not the 7-11 but some other station we filled up at along the way – don’t where it was and sure don’t need to go back unless I need me some o’ them fireworks and deer.)

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Goodbye Fort Worth – Hello Austin

About a week back as I type this we left Fort Worth and picked up a rental to take us down the highway to Austin. No surprises there really as we have ventured to Austin previously and really enjoy it. But before we got to Austin we had to drive on by to visit a bucket list – the Salt Lick BBQ. This place always rates highly as far as Texas BBQ goes and this visit we made it a priority (well, it was quite easy with a car as we could cruise on past Austin, visit the Salt Lick for a BBQ feast, then back to Austin.

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Cowboys part two

You visit DFW, you must visit the Stockyards. This is kind of like Sovereign Hill and is the tourist mecca. But also hard to tell if the locals go there as well just for some fun on a Saturday afternoon. There are so many people walking around in cowboy gear – and I’d be pretty certain a fair majority of those were non-Texans. There is the customary get your drink and walk around the streets, a rodeo (which we did not attend), the original stockyards (hence the name), plenty of eating and drinking places, Harley Davidson’s cruising, and the parade.

Well, not really a parade it is a simulation of the herding of cattle down the street from the stockyards. If there were that many cattle in the olden days, there would never have been a Maccas. It’s okay to see the long-horns and cowboys but like a few other tourist parades – blink and you miss it (think those ducks in Memphis). However, if in this part of town you gotta visit.

Stockyards 1 stockyards 2 only in texas stockyards 3 stockyards 4 stockyards 5 stockyards 6 stockyards 7 stockyards 8 love shack love shack 2 stockyards 9

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Cowboys part one

Seems like ages ago but really one … um, three days ago (I think – it’s the dateline, and my damn watch which keeps changing dates just to confuse me). Our first couple of days were spent at the Embassy Suites in downtown Fort Worth. Very nice hotel in a good location with a very good complimentary breakfast a highlight including cook to order omelettes. It was busy with many Patriot fans in town for the football, which is in another post, but also very laid back.

It was also where we signed up with Uber – big thumbs up there. For instance no hassles, clean, polite, came exactly when it said it would, charged exactly what was expected and unlike the taxi from the airport it accepted credit cards without a grumble. Some good eating places here, easy to walk around and Sundance Square is a nice place to sit back and watch the world.

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And so the journey begins

Sitting here in the Qantas lounge having a nice breakfast – so much nicer than sitting out with the everyday citizens (not that there’s anything wrong with joe citizen). Anyways good taxi trip out here (west taxis are excellent), easy through check-in and border patrol – although slight hiccups in the bag screening as they had a new system and it was rejecting everyone’s carry-on (except for mine).

So the blog is back up and whenever you are bored you can go back into the archives and read about all the boring stuff I get up to. For the doggy people there are plenty of posts from previous conferences. I will aim to have this updated regularly and may even get to finish it – note I still have not finished my last trip from 2  years back, and I never will.

 

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And here we go again

Okay, so I don’t get around to posting very often but as we are about to visit a few more of the 50 States of America I thought I better get back in the groove. So, here’s the rough map and so looking forward to this one [shrink the map and head to the east coast]

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APDT Conference: Day 5.2

You know what it’s like when you come home after five weeks overseas – it takes some time to get into the blogging again as there are so many things to do back home. But, I’ve finally decided it’s time …

Second last session for the conference and I listened to Julie Hecht on “The Science and Politics of Anthropomorphism”. Fascinating topic, supported very well with some great research and reference to this document – EpleySchroederWaytz2013

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More beer … More beer

Sitting here in the Qantas lounge drinking a complimentary Allagash White out of Portland, Maine, and I think it is about time I tell you about the beers from the Portland we visited in Oregon.

brewvanaAs previously mentioned, Portland is known by many names one if which is Brewvana. Here’s a note from inside our lift.

I wondered how many of those 154 brewing companies I could sample the wares of over three days. Well, as it turned out, not too many. We did have to do other things in Portland as well. As earlier mentioned, Oregon is tax-free and there’s some pretty good shopping to do, even bought myself this and they shipped home to Australia for me.

But I thought I’d have to try a few beers. What I have not included in this list is the six-pack of mixed stubbies from Whole Foods – $1.99 a stubby if interested. So, I only had time for beers from six different breweries but a total of 20 different beers.

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Twenty thousand roads I went down, down, down. And they all led me straight back home to you

Gram Parsons.

What does that have to do with anything. Well, Caroline is the expert on all things musical and she tells me the story of Gram Parsons, singer songwriter, who used to venture into the Joshua Tree desert and just think (if you don’t know about this, then think of when Homer Simpson went into the desert and had the coyote talk to him). One time in 1973, Gram Parsons was staying at the Joshua Tree hotel when he passed away, suddenly, one evening. He was at the place of two of his greatest loves – the desert and hard drugs.

Anyway, some relative wanted his body back in Louisiana possibly in order to claim the inheritance. However, Gram Parsons’ manager and some friends knew that Gram’s wish was to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in the desert. So, they stole his coffin from the airport, drove out to a location in Joshua Tree – Cap Rock – and poured petrol over the coffin and lit a match. The police were on the trail and put a stop, not before some ashes got scattered. The rest was shipped back, there was no offence for stealing a body; however, they did get fined $750 for stealing the coffin.

So, part of our trip from the magnificent Palm Springs (where the rich and famous and movies stars used to holiday) was to take a drive out to the Joshua Tree National Park and desert. Not necessarily to pay homage but more to see the desert and the trees known as Joshua Trees. This was another of our tourist treks of great things to see and again well worth the visit.

We left in the morning to beat the heat, although it was only 22 it felt much hotter from the beating down sun. It’s cool because it’s on top of a mountain, down below it was over 30.

There are plenty of walks and great things to see. Kind of eerie and you could quite easily imagine why you would want to just come out and watch the stars and think of anything and listen to the voices. We went for one walk and after about five minutes there was nothing there but us and nature. It was quiet and beautiful. And hot, and I wish I’d taken some water. And we could see our car after turning each rock but maybe it was a mirage because it disappeared as quickly as we saw it.

There were also great views overlooking Palm Springs and the valley and the San Andreas Fault line. If you go to LA and are looking for something else other than Disneyland and Hollywood, take the trip out for a night or two at Palm Springs – easy freeway driving (or you can fly).

Here’s a collection of shots (we stayed at a real ‘cool’ hotel the Ace and could recommend).

The first album is of Palm Springs, which as well as being the home of the movie stars, is probably more known for its architecture; the second is the Joshua Tree National Park.