Dallas is a woman who'll walk on you when you're down

We drove 346 miles in 9 hours today. Started in Mt. Pleasant and ended in Abilene. Today was the first day that we hit bad weather, and it forced us to stop early. It rained hard all morning, which made the drive from Mt. Pleasant to Dallas/Fort Worth rather unpleasant. The lack of visibility caused by the rain was compounded by the sad state of Old School II's windshield wipers. The driver's side wiper was worn out, and the wiper blade on the passenger side wiper was too short for the wiper frame. This meant that the passenger side wiper made a horrible sound as it scratched a curved line across the windshield. We were able to get replacement blades at a Walmart outside Dallas, and the difference was amazing. The wipers went from being annoyingly loud to almost silent. I'll have to look into who was responsible for installing the ill-fitting passenger-side wiper blade.

Our first planned destination for today was the Fan Man's Olde Fan Museum in Dallas. Sadly, the Fan Man was out of town for the weekend, so the museum was closed. We drove on and went to lunch at Cousin's BBQ south of Fort Worth. It was good, but unremarkable. The veggie sides were yummy, though. The best part about Cousin's was finding it, which involved considerable guesswork.

After lunch we visited the Kimball Art Museum and the conservatory at the Fort Worth Botanical Garden (bottom photo). I wasn't overwhelmed by Louis Kahn's design for the Kimball, although it was impressive. I hate saying this, but I think the high expectations I had about it negatively affected my appreciation. I hate saying that sort of thing because I hate when people act as if the best attitude to have before experiencing an artwork is to think it's going to suck. One thing I really liked about the Kimball, however, was its collection. There were not very many works on display and almost everything on display was quite impressive.

The botanical garden and conservatory were right down the street from the Kimball. The conservatory's most distinctive feature was its tinted windows. I'd never before seen a conservatory that had all black windows. Inside, it had a rather nice water feature, which I got some extremely low resolution footage of on my digital camera. I'll post it on YouTube later. I also got some footage of the fountain at the Kimball, which was distinctive in that it had jets whose only purpose seemed to be to create turbulent currents in the water. I liked that, because it created a distinctive sound, unlike any other fountain I'd ever heard. And, as you all should know, the sound a fountain creates is at least half its appeal.

After the conservatory, we drove west, but although it had stopped raining, the rainwater had started to freeze on the highway, making it very unsafe to drive. After driving by multiple cars and trucks that had slid off the road, we made it to Abilene and explored its downtown. The downtown, like that of almost all small towns that aren't tourist destinations or college towns, was nearly completely abandonned. With the help of my dad on the phone, we were able to find the area outside of town where they've built all the chain hotels, restaurants, and stores. We checked into a Comfort Suites, had dinner, and called it a day.

I don't think we're going to be able to make it to Marfa tomorrow. The weather's too bad.