since the economy went south, we rent cars for out of town trips to save wear and tear on the old beater. this trip to enterprise held a great surprise: a 2009 mercedes C300 for $62 all weekend, plus an available carbon offset! we could not resist the chance to make the 6-hour drive bearable with bluetooth and standard-issue german pleather.
fast forward through kansas to OKC, where i was dropped off in the 'burbs to visit a friend from college. we went out for sushi at okura (see yelp) and wine, before calling it a night. i had an early departure on amtrak's heartland flyer the next day.
my friend dropped me off about 10 minutes before southbound train #821 departed. amtrak uses the old santa fe depot. a much nicer union station has been converted for private use and the tracks are being ripped up so an interstate can be widened.
this is not a good time to see oklahoma -- miles of flat, scrubby brown dotted by red clay soil -- until you reach the arbuckle mountain pass, where the train snakes through at a slow speed and offers glimpses of the state's #1 tourist attraction.
in the fourth hour of train travel, we enter the DFW metroplex and its soaring highway flyovers and bobbing oil wells. here is the fort worth intermodal transit center, a model of efficiency (and a purpose-built structure, i might add):
TRE commuter rail on the tracks adjacent to amtrak:
bike lockers:
with just under five hours to spare before the return trip to oklahoma and determined not to rely on a car, i hopped aboard a city bus (schedules and maps posted at each of the 10 bays!) to locate a recommended restaurant in the fort worth stockyards.
ten minutes later i arrived at exchange avenue, the entryway to the stockyards. most of the brick buildings appear to be original and are bursting with western tchotchkes. similarly, the tourists are bursting out of their wranglers between stops for beef and beer (drinking in the street is legal here?).
i made a quick loop to snap some pictures then headed back to the corner of main and exchange to locate the lonesome dove western bistro, home of james beard award winning chef tim love.
the meal was absolutely fantastic: butter lettuce salad with very tart vinaigrette, grilled rabbit (the "stockyards special") and perfect veggies, a house-branded glass of viognier, and mexican donuts dipping sauces and a cup coffee.
$50 later (!) i was ready for part two of my visit: the fort worth museum of modern art. to get there, i headed back to the ITC on a city bus and caught another one to the "cultural district" that is home to three museums (the kimball and amon carter being the other two). the modern art museum is a breathtaking structure, far more striking from the inside than our bloch addition but only average from the outside. individual installations are housed in indented galleries that look out over a placid, shallow pool and clear skies. i hesitated to take pictures inside, but there are plenty to see here.
after about 90 minutes of art, i needed to get back downtown to check out sundance square, a P+L-type area carved out of their downtown. i was pretty amazed at the adaptive reuse (and cleanliness) of their entire downtown. quite a contrast to downtown dallas and my preconceptions based on the fort worth skyline. alas, their mi cocina is still alive and kicking:
after about an hour of walking around it was time to board #822 back to ardmore, where my ride awaited.