Texas Road Trip

🤠📍The final leg of our epic Texas triangle adventure! If you missed Parts 1 & 2 (Houston → San Antonio → Austin), hop to my profile for the full saga. Last pic shows our route map and drive times between cities! After soaking up Austin's quirky vibes, we pointed our trusty rental north toward the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex—the glittering urban heart of North Texas. Buckle up, because this final stretch serves up everything from surreal public art to authentic cowboy culture that'll have you yelling "Yeehaw!" before you know it. Stop 4️⃣: Dallas – Big City, Bigger Personality 👀 Giant Eyeball: Dallas' Most Unblinking Attraction Let's start with the weird and wonderful. Tucked in the Main Street District, the Giant Eyeball (official title: Eye, by artist Tony Tasset) is exactly what it sounds like—a 30-foot-tall, hyper-realistic fiberglass eyeball that stares unflinchingly at the sky. It's delightfully bizarre, slightly unsettling, and 100% Instagram gold. The iris is a perfect match to the artist's own eye, creating this surreal "Big Brother is watching you... artistically" vibe. Located at 1605 Main Street, this public art piece sits in a small park surrounded by Dallas's sleek skyscrapers. The contrast between the organic, vulnerable eye and the cold glass towers is pure visual poetry. Pro tip: visit at golden hour when the sunlight makes the white sclera glow eerily. Stand directly underneath and shoot upward for a forced-perspective shot that'll make your followers do a double-take. After your eyeball selfie session, take a 15-20 minute stroll through the Main Street District. This revitalized downtown corridor is packed with third-wave coffee shops (try the nitro cold brew at Mercantile), boutique clothing stores selling local designer threads, and historic buildings that whisper Dallas's oil-boom past. It's the perfect spot to stretch your legs and people-watch the city's power brokers grabbing lunch. ⛲️ Klyde Warren Park: A Park in the Sky Walk 15 minutes (or a quick $8 rideshare) to Klyde Warren Park, one of Dallas's most ingenious urban projects. Here's the cool part: this 5.2-acre green space is literally built on top of a freeway (Woodall Rodgers Freeway), capping the highway and reconnecting neighborhoods that were severed in the 1960s. It's a "deck park," and the engineering alone is worth admiring. The park is a vibrant community living room with something happening every hour: Food trucks line the perimeter daily (the Korean BBQ tacos are life-changing) Free programming: morning yoga, afternoon chess tournaments, evening concerts A fantastic children's playground with splash fountains (perfect for cooling off) The Nancy Best Fountain: a choreographed water feature where kids (and adults) splash through 100+ jets of water Grab a blanket, snag some food truck grub, and enjoy a picnic with the Dallas skyline as your backdrop. On weekends, there's often live jazz or acoustic sets. It's the kind of place where you see Dallasites actually relaxing—and in this work-hard city, that's saying something. Stop 5️⃣: Fort Worth – Where Cowboy Dreams Come Alive Fort Worth is NOT Dallas' little sibling—it has its own soul, and that soul wears cowboy boots. Just a 45-minute drive west from Dallas, this is where Texas heritage stops being a museum piece and becomes a living, breathing culture. 🤠 Fort Worth Stockyards: The Real Wild West If you only do one thing in Fort Worth, make it the Stockyards. This National Historic District is a 98-acre ode to the cattle industry that built Texas, and it's spectacularly authentic. The original brick streets, old wooden corrals, and rustic saloons aren't replicas—they're the real deal, lovingly preserved. The Star Attraction: The Cattle Drive 🐄 Twice daily at 11:30 AM and 4:00 PM, the modern world melts away as real Texas longhorns—those iconic beasts with horns spanning 6+ feet—are driven down Exchange Avenue by genuine cowhands on horseback. The street gets blocked off 10 minutes beforehand as crowds line the sidewalks. When those massive, gentle giants plod past you, so close you could touch them (don't), you feel the ghosts of 10 million cattle that once passed through here. Pro tip: Arrive 20 minutes early to snag a spot near the start of the route (by the Stockyards Visitor Center). The cowboys often chat with the crowd before they begin, and you'll get the best photos without 50 heads in your frame. Guns, Grub & Cowboy Swagger Between cattle drives, the Stockyards keep the entertainment rolling: Gunfight shows: Costumed cowboys stage Old West shootouts in the streets (check times at the Visitor Center; usually hourly on weekends) Shopping: M.L. Leddy's Boots is a temple of custom cowboy craftsmanship. A pair of their handmade boots starts at $500 and takes 6 months to create. Even if you're not buying, the smell of leather is intoxicating. Cowboy hats: Starr Western Wear ha #US #Texas #Austin