After spending a weekend in Chicago, I flew across the country to Portland for a day of meetings while Garry headed to Texas. He had 36 hours to himself in Dallas before I arrived on a red-eye flight the following morning. My flight from Portland departed at 23:55pm. It was an all too brief 3.5-hour flight. However, thanks to the magic of time zones, I landed shortly after 5:30am. Not a red-eye route I’d recommend for anyone!
Inside we saw the window from which those deadly bullets were fired and learned more about the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. It is undeniably chilling to look down at the streets below and imagine the mayhem the shooter must have witnessed that day.
The plaza itself appears frozen in time. A small park beside Houston Street's triple underpass remains unchanged since that fateful day. The grassy knoll is still there and the parklands look exactly as they did in the infamous Zapruder home movie. A small painted cross on the road marks where the first bullet struck the president. Naturally, we explored the grassy knoll, noted its elevated vantage point, and debated the existence of a fabled second shooter.
Interestingly, before the tragic events of 1963, Daley Plaza's primary drawcard was its pioneer history. In the nearby Founders Park, opposite an austere memorial to JFK, there's a plaque commemorating the city's first settlers. A simple log cabin in the midst of the park recalls those early days. While researching this post I learned that the cabin is a restored replica of John Neely Bryan's home. It's reputed to be the first house built in Dallas.
Once we’d had our fill of bloody American history, we made our way over to Pioneer Plaza. I’ve briefly posted about this urban park before. It holds the world's largest bronze sculpture, a monument to the cattle drives that depicts forty bronze longhorn steers under the guidance of three cowboys. We stopped to take an obligatory tourist photo of me rodeo riding one of these enormous steers.
At this point, it became clear that there wasn’t much more to see in the Downtown area beyond the typical street market district or a local art gallery. At the behest of our Lonely Planet guide, we decided to finish the day by taking a train to nearby Fort Worth for dinner. This gave us one final Downtown highlight. As the train pulled away from the station, we were delighted by a fleeting final look at Daley Plaza's sloping lawn and gracefully curving roadway.
The Lonely Planet promised Garry a meat feast in true Texan style at Riscky's, a local BBQ institution. Needless to say, we soon found ourselves dining on an enormous platter of ribs, and other carnivorous delights. Garry was suitably impressed as you can see in the images above.
The following morning, we flew to Houston to visit the Johnson Space Center. We booked our flights with Southwest Airlines. At the time it was, and still is, the USA’s largest budget airline. While neither of us is a budget airline fan, we were curious to experience this iconic budget airline.
Southwest was surprisingly good. From start to finish, the airline staff was always efficient, friendly, and proactive. For example, upon arriving at the airport we discovered that our flight had been canceled. However, the airline has flights scheduled every 30 minutes between Dallas and Houston. As a result, we were transferred onto a later flight without a moment's hesitation.
Follow this link to learn more about our adventures in Houston.
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