Saturday 20 October 2012

Dallas - 20th October 2012



After a full twelve hours sleep I woke up at 8.00am and my body clock in the zoned that it should be in. Excellent!

After a lovely shower and a quick look around the facilities of the hotel we got in the car and set off for South Fork Ranch. We set the satnav – without putting the hood down this down – and it said we had about three quarters of an hour drive. The weather is beautiful. Clear blue skies and 76 degrees at 10.00am. I think it was a good idea we got the satnav – we seemed to have change roads rather a lot of times, and I am sure we would have got lost had we not had our little lady telling us where to get off! Dallas seems to be a rather sprawling city – lots of high rises, freeways and shopping malls. Most of the journey was fairly built up, and it was only when we were a lot nearer that the landscape changed. Very upmarket housing estates though, not the large open spaces that I had imagined. When we had about a mile to go, Paul got a CD out and put it in to play. I did wonder what on earth he was doing – he had got Seb to burn the Dallas theme tune onto a CD so we came along the road with that blaring out. It did set the scene though – I had to laugh.
We pulled into the driveway (not the driveway, one next to it) and drove up to the visitors centre. The tickets for the tour were $10.75 plus tax – it goes every thirty minutes. There is a walk through to get to the tram – photos are taken for a souvenir in front of a Dallas neon sign. If I looked anything like any of the Ewing women I might have bought it, but sadly just being there didn’t do anything for me at all! The walls were full of pictures of the cast at various junctures between the 1978 start of the series, and the end in 1991. There is now a couple more showing how old they all look as the new series has just started again. The gun that shot JR is in a cabinet, along with a few hats and other props. And a huge gas barbeque – it was apparently Dallas that launched gas barbeques into being. As they always ate outside, a barbeque company was tasked with providing a large gas one that was scaled down to go on sale to the general public.

A tractor then pulled a couple of tram coaches around the grounds and over to the Ewing Mansion. Nothing looked as big as I thought it would. The grounds were quite compact, and the house was only a tad larger than a normal house. The grounds were laid out for a wedding – there was apparently one this afternoon, but it was the same place as they filmed when one of the Ewing family members got married at the ranch. We were treated to a background talk by a very eccentric lady who knew all there was to know about South Fork – from the beginning when they had to get the original owners permission to use it for filming, to the next owners that went bust and then to the present owners that have turned it into a tourist attraction and conference centre.
We were then given a tour of the house, the main rooms and the bedrooms. It really didn’t look that small on the telly! The bedrooms were tiny. But I think most of the indoor filming was done in a studio rather than here. The outside part and the swimming pool were as I remembered them. I will have to buy the DVD’s and watch it all over again! All thirteen years worth, plus the new ones. Paul and I had our picture taken outside the front door – still didn’t look like Bobby and Pamela though!

After that, we were free to wander around for as long as we wanted. We went into Miss Ellie’s Porch Deli and had a sandwich and a hot chocolate, and then wandered around the grounds. We took a picture of the drive that was shown on the opening scenes of the show – that was apparently done in so many takes it made the drive look about three miles long when it is only probably about 500 yards. They also used to put talcum powder on the drive so it looked as though the cars were throwing up dust. Tricks of the trade.
There was a few cattle and horses grazing in the fields, and so all the stables and cattle barns are actually used for the animals. Elenor’s cottage in the new series is just at the end of the drive as well. We went back to the car, and drove down to the driveway that was used for the opening shots and took a couple of pictures – well, as we were there…

We drove back to Dallas downtown, and thought we would try the Texas State Fair that the rental car bus driver had told us about yesterday. We did happen to hear that Madonna had cancelled her concert due for tonight as she has laryngitis. Is that something that can get better after a day? Hope so, otherwise we have come a long way for a cancelled concert. It is a three week long fair, and is in a place called Fair Park. The satnav was programmed again, and it took us directly to the Fair. We parked in a little car park for $15 – someone was making good money whilst this was on – and walked about ten minutes to the entrance. There were hundreds of people going in – it apparently has around three million visitors over the time that it is on. And the place is huge – massive. It is like the Suffolk Show, but about ten times bigger. Well, we are in Texas.
There was a big building full of cars – virtually every new car that you can buy. One beetle had a map of Texas painted on its bonnet. That kept Paul busy for a minute or two. Then there was an actual fair part – so many stalls and fluffy toys to win. But they weren’t small fluffy toys – one of them was as tall as the man that won it! The amount of food stalls, and rides just kept on and on. And kept getting bigger and bigger. There was a huge ferris wheel and a skyway that took you completely over the top of everything. Then there were the scary rides – and there were loads of them that threw you upside down and round the corner. Reminded Paul of the flight over the Bungle Bungles. Won’t be going on any of them then!

We then watched a BMX stunt show – they had a couple of world champions there so not just some kid they had paid a couple of quid to do a turn or two. Very good – got some good action shots. Then we went to see some Pig Racing. Yes, that is not a spelling mistake. We watched pigs racing – for oreo cookies. Bizarre, but quite funny. They ran so fast all my pictures got were blurred images. They even put a jump in one of the races.

We watched a horse show, and went through some of the cattle sheds, but our feet were now beginning to tell us that we had been on them for hours. It was such a good Fair, and there was so much going on, we could have stayed for a good few more hours. There was a huge stage, and later on the Commodores were on. But even that didn’t tempt – especially as Lionel Richie is playing in Birmingham tonight, and I have no doubt the others may not be the originals either! We had one last wander through a California Redwood that has been turned into a three room mobile home (the chap that lived in it was there to tell the story) before we headed back to the hotel. Madam satnav did her stuff, and we were back in about fifteen minutes. And there was a message on the phone saying that the Mustang was ready….

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