<– Day 32 – Wed. May 13th: No Raining on Murphy’s Parade | TRIP OVERVIEW | Day 34 – Fri. May 15th: High Plains Drifter –>

The owner of this BBQ restaurant in Grapevine was a retired cop who had never worked in a restaurant before launching his BBQ restaurant. Last fall he had someone build a custom smoker that looks like a train. Here he is explaining how it works. Despite it being the hardest job he’s ever had, he loves running the restaurant.

Ann’s grandfather took a turn for the worse. After I watched her stress eat two bags (small bags) of M&Ms I knew it was time to send her back home for a few days. So, she arrived in Pasco Thursday evening.

After dropping Ann at the airport I left for Bowie, TX.

Prior to her departure, we attempted to accomplish one thing. We wanted to see the cowboy glockspiel in the town of Grapevine. The cowboy glockspiel is a clock tower. At certain times of the day, two automatronic cowboys appear on the tower and engage in a gunfight. I’m told one always dies, but never the same one. The death is chosen at random by a computer.

We arrived in Grapevine at 11:30am, all ready to watch the gunfight unfold. It turned out we arrived as the town was readying itself for their annual beer celebration. So, there was a great deal of hustle and some bustle all through town.

Yes, lots of hustle and bustle in town, but not evident at all in this photo of downtown.

This vintage truck was used to haul a bunch of stools into town.

At the high noon hour, we stood ready to watch the gunfight. It never came. Over the loudspeaker we heard that the weather wasn’t cooperating, so the cowboys wouldn’t be fighting. The problem was the weather was just fine. Since Ann planned to depart from the nearby DFW airport, it didn’t make sense to go anywhere else, so we walked through shops and ate lunch. We blew enough time that we were ready to watch the 3:00pm cowboy show. However, even though the weather improved (it was a hot 95 degree day with no rain and some high clouds), the cowboys still didn’t come out due to weather.

Needless to say, that spoiled our day. So, Ann brought up a video on Youtube. We hadn’t needed to come to Grapevine after all!

On the plus side, it is a cute town!

There were a variety of scupltures around town.

Tomorrow I plan on going to Wichita Falls and then on to Lubbock. I hope to make it to Amarillo by nightfall. We are nearing the end of the Messin’ with Texas tour. It sure has been fun!

<– Day 32 – Wed. May 13th: No Raining on Murphy’s Parade | TRIP OVERVIEW | Day 34 – Fri. May 15th: High Plains Drifter –>