My first time riding a mechanical bull

We had arrived in Dallas just in time to miss the annual Dallas Fair – supposedly (according to a guy at the hotel) the biggest fair in all of the USA. “Well, that sucks” we thought and asked the receptionist if there was anything else we could do in the area. She said that there was nothing worth seeing in Dallas, but if we wanted a cowboy experience we should visit Fort Worth (about an hour away). Off we went!

Everything happens for a reason right? Although we missed the Dallas Fair, we had arrived just in time for The Red Steagall Cowboy Gathering and Western Swing Festival!

The Red Steagall Cowboy Gathering

The Red Steagall Cowboy Gathering happens on a weekend once each year in Fort Worth, and events include a chuck wagon cooking competition, ranch rodeo, cattle drive, dancing, and live music performances.

Walking through Fort Worth during a cowboy gathering is like walking through an ad co-sponsored by Ed Hardy and Wrangler jeans! I was glad I was wearing jeans. But even so, we stood out like sore thumbs (Ang even more so because she was wearing yoga pants). You’d be hard pressed to find a place with more cowboy hats, jeans or rhinestones. I can understand the hats and denim, but rhinestones?? Where’d that come from? I’m curious to know whether people normally dress this way in Fort Worth or if it was just for the event.

There’s so much to tell you about that I figured it’d be best to section this post off into smaller more digestible chunks:

Chuck Wagon Cookoff

Making bean stew the traditional way

Where else could you find a chuck wagon cookoff? So cool! There were dozens of teams set up with their own chuck wagons (Where else could you find people who own working chuck wagons!?!) cooking meals which all included biscuits, meat, bean stew and peach cobbler. The rules are simple: make your meals the traditional way using a chuck wagon and fire pits, using the same ingredients as everyone else. I don’t think there was a rule about how you clean the pots afterwards, but I saw people cleaning them the old fashioned way (in tubs) too.

And the best part? Everyone gets to sample the food! Even though the food made Ang and me feel a little ill (I suspect the culprit was the gravy), it was well worth it. We tried samples from three different chuck wagons which included: beef, biscuits, mashed potatoes, gravy, bean stew (some were plain bean stews and others were bean and vegetable stews), and peach cobbler (some were more cobbler-like and others were more pie-like). It was traditional home-cooking and for the most part, it was good! I loved the peach cobbler we had at the last wagon. Yum yum yum.

There are so many cookoff participants that the competition is sectioned off into different parts of the day. So long as you’re in the area in the afternoon, you’ll come across a sampling.

Ranch Rodeo

All the cowboys lined up for the beginning of the ranch rodeo

I was really hesitant about attending the rodeo because I used to associate “rodeo” with brutality, animal cruelty and other uncomfortable images. But hey, we were in Texas and it didn’t feel right not to go to a rodeo. Besides, you should try and embrace other cultures while travelling. Right?

We got tickets and I’m so glad we did. The rodeo was my favourite part of the day! They didn’t do any of that bull spearing or thrashing that you usually see on rodeo ads or videos on tv. The rodeo was a competition featuring real challenges cowboys face on the farms:

Team Sorting: Working as a team to single out and move calves from the herd one at a time and in order (the calves are numbered) from one end of the field to the other. Some of the teams were able to do it really quickly and were very impressive.

Bronc Riding: Riding an angry horse for a minimum of eight seconds. Ok, I don’t think the cowboys do this on a regular basis (it’s really bad on the back), but it was definitely entertaining! Nobody was hurt (animals included).

Calf Branding: Working as a team to rope a cow and brand it. I flinched and went wide-eyed when it was announced that the next competition would be calf branding. I don’t appreciate the idea of branding cows because I don’t think they appreciate it either. Most of the cows and horses at the rodeo were branded. Thankfully, the competition used fake branding irons and flour to mark the cows.

This was taken earlier in the day when they were having horse cutting competitions. Horse cutting is when you separate one calf from the herd.

Maverick Branding: A combination of calf branding and team sorting where you have to cut the calf from the herd before you brand it. I wasn’t as keen on the sports that involved lassoing the animals because it looked painful and some of the cows would ‘moo’ in distress. They all walked away without any limps or signs of abuse though.

Mutton Bustin’: This was the CUTEST part of the competition! Little kids between 5 and 7 years of age would take turns mounting sheep and ride them for as long as they could. Some of those sheep could run really fast and most kids would fall off less than two meters out of the gate. There was one little boy though that seemed to have no concept of fear and latched onto that sheep all the way to the end through the herd! The crowd went wild as the kid strutted his way back to the starting line to receive his ribbon.

Team Doctoring: This is the only time when I’m ok with lassoing and tying down a cow. For this event, the team must cut their assigned cow from the herd and tie her down on both ends. This is done on a farm to allow a doctor to safely take a look at a distressed cow.

Wild Cow Milking: It’s exactly how it sounds! LOL And no, cowboys don’t normally do this on a farm.

Cattle Drive and Music Performances

Twice a day, cowboys would march a herd of cattle down the street. It’s a short spectacle, but worth a look if you’re already there.

Throughout the day, there are live music performances on several stages throughout the stockyards. Some performances don’t require a ticket, and others (the better ones) like the Quebe Sisters are held on stage in Mule Alley (ticket required). Mule Alley is also where they have the Swing Festival (dance) at the end of the night to live country music.

Around Fort Worth

Cowboy Boots

It was recommended to us that if we wanted to shop for cowboy hats, boots or jeans, we should shop outside of the main stockyards area because it’s very touristy and the prices are higher. I agree that the main stockyards area is very touristy, but it’s hard to imagine the prices being any higher than those of the surrounding stores. Boots were being sold anywhere between $200 and $2,000 per pair. Yes, they’re handcrafted and detailed, but gee whiz $2,o00 is a lot to spend on one pair of shoes. In another store we went to, each shirt was priced over $150 – the cheapest thing I found was a really ugly blue shirt on the sale rack for $70.

Tips for Travellers to Fort Worth & The Red Steagall Cowboy Gathering

1. Prices: To attend some of the events at The Red Steagall Cowboy Gathering, you must purchase a ticket (it cost $30 per person this year with an additional $10 to attend the rodeo). You only need one ticket for all the events (except the rodeo), and events that require the purchase of this ticket include: music performances, horsemanship clinics, daytime cowboy competitions (ex. horse cutting), and admission to the markets, Cowboy Hall of Fame, and small museums. You do not need a ticket to shop in the malls around Fort Worth or sample food at the Chuck Wagon Cookoff. Even if you don’t purchase a ticket for the daytime events, I would highly recommend going to the Ranch Rodeo ($10)!
2. There are surprisingly few places to get quick eats at the main Fort Worth stockyards area. If you’re there for the Cowboy Gathering, stop by the chuck wagon cookoff areas in the afternoon for free samples. There are enough samples to keep you full throughout the day if you’re short on change.
3. You can bring snacks and drinks into the rodeo (they’re very casual), but you can also purchase snacks there (hot dogs are $3.50 and they also have cotton candy, burgers etc). Do NOT purchase a chilli hot dog. It tastes as nasty as it looks, and it looks pretty darn nasty.
4. Watch where you step because the cows and horses walk on the same roads as the people.
5. This may be different next year, but when we entered the main area of Fort Worth Stockyards, there was a sign for $10 all day parking. We went a little further in and ended up finding parking for $5.
6. I don’t think Fort Worth would’ve been as much fun if we hadn’t stumbled across the Cowboy Gathering. But, if you’re there for it, plan to spend an entire day there. Go early (before noon) for good parking. If not, a couple hours to circle the area will suffice.

I won $24.30 off of a $1 at Bellagio!

We had driven an entire day to get from Redding, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. It was exhausting, but at least we avoided the main highways by taking the mountain pass route.

Approaching Vegas was overwhelming.You drive through miles of desert nothingness so dark at night that you can see the milky way and stars litter the skies like icing sugar on a chocolate cake. Then, you begin to approach a city of lights so bright you wonder if something is going to short circuit. The city gets bigger and bigger, and so do the buildings and towers. Suddenly you’re driving (or rather inching) along The Strip and your senses are overwhelmed by the stench of hundreds of people, the sounds of commercials and outdoor performances playing one after the other telling you that “Leanne Rhimes is performing at the Luxor” “Watch the #1 musical performance..” “Rated #1 show in all of Las Vegas” etc. as if you were on the set of Minority Report, and the bright lights twinkle, flash, and move across the buildings around you all trying to entice you to spend money at their resort. It’s an epileptic person’s worse nightmare.

I can’t say I was keen on staying in Vegas when we first arrived. I normally avoid big cities when I travel. But, by the end of two days, I wished we could’ve stayed at least one more night because there was so much to do and too little time to do it all.

This was my second visit to Vegas as an adult. The first trip was in 2007 for five days and that was just the right amount of time to see some shows, shop at the outlet mall, and go through all the hotels on The Strip. Two days is not enough time.

Sidenote: Please don’t take your kids to Vegas. I went once as a kid and hated it because I wasn’t allowed to step into any area that had gambling (including restaurant seats that had gaming screens), which pretty much meant I couldn’t go anywhere because there are machines everywhere! It’s also not a good idea to bring your kids because there are dozens upon dozens of people along the streets handing out graphic stripper and prostitute cards to anyone who walks by. Even if you avoid them, the cards cover the sidewalks like confetti after a New Years Eve party.

Worthwhile Things to Do in Vegas

1. 

   Tastes of the World at the Coke shop is also worthwhile. It's $7 for 2 trays of pop from around the world or $8 for a tray of floats.

   ‘Tastes of the World’ at the Coke shop is also worthwhile. It’s $7 for 2 trays of pop from around the world or $8 for a tray of floats.
2. Spend an entire afternoon walking down The Strip and visiting all the different hotels. It may look like a small street, but it takes a really long time to walk from one end to the next. Each hotel has an underlying theme and most have free daily shows (ex. Bellagio’s water show outside, Treasure Island’s Siren’s show, Caesar’s Palace afternoon show etc.). There are tons of cheesy photo opportunities and fun to be had.
3. Take in a show. I would go to at least one major show like a Cirque du Soleil performance, and maybe one of the smaller burlesque shows for kicks. Ticket prices may be high for a Cirque show, but it’s worth it.
4. Devote an afternoon to shopping at the Outlet Mall. Like everything else in Vegas, the Outlet Mall is oversized and will take an afternoon to get through.
5. Try a buffet and don’t skimp on it. Avoid the ones that are $7.99 and treat yourself to a nice one – budget $20 for lunch or $30 for dinner.

Tips for Travellers to Vegas

1. Book your hotel room online and ahead of time! Booking your Vegas hotel room online is always cheaper than booking a room in person.
2. Be aware that the hotels have begun charging an extra “resort fee” that range from $10 to $25 per night. This may make your cheap room more expensive than the nicer room at the more expensive hotel.
3. Prices for rooms change throughout the day, so if you have the time, check the prices a few times over the course of a couple of days to get the best deal.
4. If you don’t know what show you want to watch, visit places like Tix4Tonight at the Coke store for discounted tickets. Be aware that they charge a $5 fee so it’s worth it to buy tickets for expensive shows but not so much for the smaller shows.
5. If you want to catch a Cirque du Soleil performance, you might have to purchase them online ahead of time for good seats (depending on the show). Ka and Love usually have discounted day of tickets, but O is usually sold out by the day before.
6. If you want to get a discount on Cirque du Soleil performances and don’t mind sitting on your own, you can get discounted single seats at the booking desk. There were only ‘limited vision’ seats left when we got there so we bought individual seats scattered in the nicer sections of the theatre that were much cheaper – the ‘limited vision’ seats cost about $120 while the seats that we got that are normally worth around $170 only cost us around $120. You can’t talk during the performance anyways and you won’t want to look away from the stage to look at your friend / partner either.
7. If you want to change your seat, you can always try to go to the booking desk an hour before a performance to check if anyone has refunded their tickets last minute.
8. 

   CSI: The Experience - Worst Vegas attraction EVER.

   
   Do NOT go to CSI: The Experience. I seriously want a refund!! It was $30 to go in and it’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever paid for. It’s supposed to give you the experience of solving a crime on your own. I thought that at the very least the crime scenes would be detailed and realistic like they have in the show. But no. The crime scene looked like the set of a high school’s haunted house and the “experience” consisted of going through a few rooms and filling out a form with information that’s hand-fed to you on posters and interactive computer screens. I actually felt like they should be paying ME to go through it. At the end of it I actually did ask for a refund but the guy said he couldn’t do it. He also said that lots of people complain about it being crap, after which I thought “then why the hell didn’t you tell us not to go in!?!” Ugh.
9. If you want to gamble a bit, take out $x from your wallet (the amount you’re willing to pay for the experience of gambling) and put your wallet away until you’re out of the casino. This helps to prevent overgambling.
10. If you want free alcoholic drinks, just sit in front of a slot machine for a while and bet a few cents every minute or so. Waitresses will come around and ask if you want something to drink. It’s complimentary and a really cheap way to get buzzed before you hit the clubs. I’ve heard this works better if you’re female with a female friend (men don’t get as many drinks). Be aware that the drinks contain much more hard alcohol than you may be used to. You can also order non-alcoholic drinks.
11. I’ve heard that you’re more likely to win on a slot machine that’s closer to a casino entrance because they’re programmed to have higher chances of wins so that people walking by the casino see others winning and are enticed to enter. I haven’t found out whether this is true or not.

See all of Anny’s photos in her original post.

This isn’t travelling. To me, travelling is when you have to constantly push your boundaries and don’t allow yourself the luxury of becoming complacent. It’s a learning process where you experience everything for the first time without the influence of others so that you can discover what you really love and hate. It’s a means of discovering yourself and learning to modify your habits and ways of thinking to become someone better than the person you were when you left. This is a vacation.

I’ve gotten used to having to figure out where I should go next and how to get there by myself, getting to the next destination on my own, eating at a table for one, sightseeing by my lonesome, and talking to myself. Now I have three other people to talk and laugh with, take dorky photos with, order and share food with… etc. One person drives while a second looks up the cities on the map, a third figures out which hotels are viable options at each destination, and a fourth distributes car snacks. I don’t think it could get any easier! It could be comfier (we’re pretty crammed in the Prius), but not easier.

Paradise Lost

Oregon Caves

Today we visited the Oregon Caves under typical West Coast weather: rain, rain and more rain. I don’t have proper hiking boots so I wore my runners. My shoes and socks were soaked right through. Poor Kim didn’t have a jacket with a hood or proper walking shoes so he wore an emergency poncho and was soaked from head to toe by the end of the tour.

Oregon Caves is definitely worth a stop in my books. It’s only $8.50 US per person for an hour long tour of the caves and you get to go really far down the caves and up the mountain from within. You get to see calcite deposits and structures that are hundreds of thousands of years old as well as the remains of the markings made by tourists back in the 1930s which are now permanently embossed under a layer of limestone.

My favourite part of the tour was probably the damp cave called Paradise Lost. It’s a small area with a high ceiling covered in these giant limestone structures that look like “claws” (if you’re Ang), “jellyfish” (if you’re Morten or Kim), or “the Grinch’s hands from Dr. Seuss” or “parachuters” (if you’re me). You get dripped on quite a bit in here especially since you’re facing upwards to look at the structures, but it’s worth the look.

See all of Anny’s pictures in her original post.

Hot Pot

We left Canada at the start of Thanksgiving Weekend and are at our cousin Bessie’s place in WA right now. Even at 12:28am we’re still eating! LOL

If you’ve known me for a while or have read my posts, you know how much I’m capable of eating. A visit to my cousins is probably one of the only times where I can get so full that I fall into a food coma for an entire weekend. I actually gained three pounds during one of our visits over just two days! It’s a wonder that they’re not chubby. I think the trick is to be super active – they’re P90X-ers and ‘let’s go training for a half-marathon on Saturday mornings’ and ‘we just came back from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro’ uber-fit people.

We arrived yesterday evening just in time to surprise Bessie at her belated birthday party. Before arriving, we stopped to refill the tank at a gas station beside a KFC where Ang asked “you think we should get something at KFC?” to which I replied “are you kidding me? We’re going to Bessie and Mary’s!” (Bessie and Mary are sisters). Ang said that the party was only going to have “snacks” according to Mary. HA! As if. Mary ended up serving lasagna, seafood pasta, two types of salads, four types of hor’dourves, crackers with cheese and two types of dips, chips with salsa and guacamole, Chinese sticky rice, a Costco sized Greek dessert platter, moon cake, chicken nuggets, fancy cheese filled bread, in addition to Bessie’s signature lychee bellinis and iced tea vodka drinks etc.

Angela and Anny boxing at 321 Bounce

After “snacks” we went to 321 Bounce to sumo wrestle, box with giant gloves in a bouncy castle, compete through inflatable race courses, play dodgeball, and pretend to be kids at a birthday party. Mary had booked the place for an hour and didn’t think it’d be enough time, but one hour was the maximum allowed. After an hour we were all pooped! Best workout ever! It was so much fun – I was even laughing when Ang hit me square in the face with a giant boxing glove. My nose hurt for a while – she hit me so hard Morten actually heard a smack and thought I’d really been injured.

We got back to the house at around 11pm and spent the next three hours chatting and eating and then woke up eight hours later to meet everyone and start the food fest all over again! We went to a Chinese restaurant for a traditional Chinese breakfast that included salty soy bean soup, green onion pancakes, black bean noodles, Chinese beef pies (best ones I’ve tried), barley dumplings, stinky tofu, sticky rice filled with meats and veggies, fried Chinese donuts, and sticky seafood rice noodles.

It isn’t just the fact that there’s a lot of food around that makes us eat so much, it’s the fact that the food is SO GOOD!! My cousins know how to cook the yummiest foods and which dishes at which restaurants are the best. Tonight we had hot pot at Bessie’s for dinner and went to two different Asian grocery stores to get the right ingredients. Hot pot is always about the sauce, and they had all the stuff: garlic paste, green onion, soya sauce, vinegar, the hot pot black paste (it’s labelled barbeque, but it’s not actually barbeque flavour), and lots of grated daikon. They also had every kind of ball (fish, chicken, beef etc) and veggies, udon, clear noodles, and so on and so forth. For dessert Bessie made chocolate brownies that were crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside. YUM! If I spent a week with my cousins it’d take me a month to list out everything we would’ve eaten. Gobble gobble! Oink oink.

Time to sleep off the food coma…

To see more pictures from 321 Bounce and our food excursions go to Anny’s original blog post here.

Eating chicken feet at Dim Sum

I arrived back home on Wednesday and I’ve been catching up with everyone and everything ever since (which by the way, involves a lot of food: Sushi at Kiku, Dim Sum at Red Star Seafood Restaurant, Thai at Green Basil and Brekkie at IHOP within the last 48 hours – oink oink). I still haven’t gotten around to resizing all my pictures from my last couple of weeks in Oz for posts. :S

Announcement

I just realized that although I’ve mentioned it on Twitter, I haven’t posted anything about it here on my blog. My sister (Angela), brother-in-law (Morten), brother-in-law’s brother (Kim) and I are going on a road trip of the states starting this Saturday, October 10th!

We’ll be heading down the West Coast, drop Kim off in LA (he’s got a conference to go to), drive across Middle America, head up the East Coast, and back across Canada in about a month. I’m hoping we’ll take a little longer because I’m pretty sure a month isn’t enough time to cover everything. The official site for the trip is By Land, Sea or Air.

Interruption

BCAA Travel Books

Ang just walked into my room, said “in case you feel like a little light reading” and dumped a box of travel books from BCAA on my desk. And these aren’t even all of them! They got a set of Canadian travel books too.

Hoooolyy Guacamole. Did you know that if you sign up for a BCAA membership you can get all these travel books for free (normally $17.95 CAN each)? And all the maps you want too! Ang and Morten both got memberships for about $100 Canadian (they had some sort of two-for-one summer special) which will give us roadside assistance, six free tows, and as many maps and travel books as we want. The travel books are very similar to other guidebooks like the Lonely Planet series, but they’re arguably drier and more fact based information dispensers than travel entertainment. I think I might borrow the USA Lonely Planet book from the library for the trip anyways. You know how it is when you get used to a certain guide book format. Damn you Lonely Planet. You’ve conditioned me!

Anyways, I digress. The point of this post was to let you know that I’m still kickin’ around and still in blogger mode. I’ve just been a bit busy unpacking, getting ready to repack, meeting with friends, and catching up with family. Only 24 hours left before we leave on our US roadtrip (Twitter hashtag: #roundtripUSA)! Eep.