Bluebonnets, Texas Ranger Baseball and Cowboy Stadiums in Arlington

Texas, a country all it's own, is comprised of seven distinctively different regions.

We came into Texas through the Piney Woods region last week on I-20. The narrow north-south Piney Woods area reaches north from Beaumont to the Arkansas state line.  It's really green this year -- I expect because of the mild, wet winter.  Wildflowers greeted us along the way.  First we began seeing pale peach colored groups of blossoms, some tall grasses topped with tiny yellow blooms and then we started to see bluebonnets, the beautiful, vivid wildflower of Texas.

A few miles west of Tyler, I-20 enters the Prairies and Lakes region that includes the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth.  Already it seems we've left the tall trees and we're seeing more of the lower bushy trees commonly seen on the prairie. Huge areas of bluebonnets are all along the highway through this area. The daytime temperatures are in the mid 80's and on sunny days, it's downright hot. Our plan to tour Texas in spring might be thwarted by Mother Nature.

We're still in process of organizing (and re-organizing) the space in Endie.  As similar as she is to Mona, the little differences have made it a challenge to get settled. Opening the new curb side window shade late last week we found, to our dismay, the canvas is tan instead of black to match all the other shades on the coach -- egad.  I hope the RV Shop will help us get the correction made.

Yesterday we took a break from organizing the coach to tour some of the sites in Dallas and Arlington. Our campground in Terrell is about 40 miles east of Dallas so it should be a nice day trip.

Those famous Texas Bluebonnets grow in huge patches.
Cars stop along the roadside for photographs. 

In Arlington we visited the nearly vacant Six Flags area, though we did not go in, of course. As is customary for us when we're near one, we checked out Texas Ranger Baseball Stadium and the Dallas Cowboys Football Stadium.  It was still early so there was very little traffic.

Texas Rangers Baseball Stadium

From the baseball stadium, we took the short ride (almost a stone's throw) to see the new football stadium. This is the retracting dome stadium that cost about a zillion dollars and put Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones in the national spotlight, again. 



The House That Jerry Jones Built.

Construction of the new Cowboys Stadium was completed in 2009 and seats 80,000 with maximum (standing room) capacity of 110,000. This gargantuan is the largest domed stadium in the world. Originally estimated to cost $650 million, the stadium's final construction cost was $1.15 billion, making it one of the most expensive sports venues ever built.

With so few people and so little traffic, the sidewalks around the baseball stadium sidewalks were perfect for taking a nice long dog walk -- so we did.  After a fabulous local charcoal grilled hamburger, we drove into Dallas.