Dallas/Fort Worth - TEXAS.

Dallas Cowboys....baby! Yes we just happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch a practice game. Dallas Cowboys V's the Denver Bronco's. Honestly... if they put on this much of a show for just a practice game then we would LOVE to see the SUPERBOWL! Awesome, awesome, awesome - our $11 seats up in the back row of the 100,000 seat stadium did not dissapoint! From being able to see Tony Romo (the quarterback), to the Dallas Cowgirl Cheerleaders to the Cowboys having a win was an experience we will not forget - not to mention the 50 yard screen that hung just below the retractable roofline! Here is some footage we took -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFWzxaVt-xU

Everything is BIG down here in Texas - it is true. The Stadiums are BIG, the screens at the games are BIG, the trucks (ute's) are BIG, the roads are BIG, the meals are BIG! The landscape is remarkably like that of back home in Australian outback - big, wide open dry spaces.

There are 23 million people who call the state of Texas home (more than what we in Australia have in the entire country - approx 17 million)!

Dallas is in the middle of its 42nd day straight of temperatures over 100 degrees (38 C). Lets see if I can break that for them with my 'lack of' sun tanning ability!

 Dallas was not only the home to the like named hit television series back in the 70's & 80's, and the home of Dr. Pepper - eeww! But it is also the place where JFK was assasinated on November 22nd, 1963.

Pictured above is Kenny on the 'grassy knowle'.

 We also took a tour of the '6th floor museum' which relates to the floor level and window from which the shots were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald back on that fateful day. Even today, the roads outside the museum show the path that the cavlecade took and also have 'X's marked in 2 spots on the road where the hits were made.

Fort Worth is a neighbouring city of Dallas (commonly joined by the same International Airport - of which we later found out that Qantus now fly into, as there were a lot of Australian's down here in Texas)!

Fort Worth was a nice small city with loads of character. With it's horse mounted Police men rather than Police cars and cowboys and cowgirls just roaming the sidewalks. In 'historic downtown' we came across a cattle drive over cobblestoned streets of 'long horned cows'. These animals look rediculous! Their horns span 6 foot across their heads! 

Today we moved on from Dallas/Fort Worth and headed for Lance Armstrong's city of Austin - Texas 4 hours south!

Team Connor USA. XOXOXO

OKLAHOMA....!

That's got you interested, hasn't it........more about Kenny in just a second!

We arrived in Oklahoma City - Oklahoma in yet another HOT day - 110 F (or 43 C).

All we new on arrival about the city, were the bombings that took place at 9.02am back in 1995. This incident killed around 165 people. It was a blast on the Federal Building in the centre of town. The perpetrators targeted this building which was the work place of many Federal Office & Law Enforcement workers and also very sadly their daycare centre.

 We took a tour of the monument site and memorial museum that they have established here in remembrance of these people. It was truly, a sad, moving and humbling experience to have the opportunity to see.

Oklahoma City also has a very nice quadrant of town called 'Bricktown' - a small man made stream surrounded by restaurants, bars and ice creamery's, which we frequented on many occasions.

Most afternoons saw us evade the heat of the day in our hotel pool. I appear to have the 'whitest' stomach around, so took the time to work on the tan! Yet as soon as my mid riff appears, unfortunately so does the rain clouds and freak thunderstorms!

At the hotel pool we were lucky enough to become friends with a Navy SEAL. He had sustained injuries which claimed one of his limbs from a war, at a very young age 2 years ago, not that it harbours him in any way whatsoever. We were lucky enough to be graced with his company for the 3 days, and he is truly one of the most inspirational, strong and heroic human beings we have ever had the chance to meet, he is a total credit to himself, his family and his country.

Off to Elk City - on historic Route 66 (approx 2 hours out of OKC) to visit another family whom we had also met at our time in Yellowstone Park together. Chy & Laura. They have a beautiful home with a pool. Flowers and gifts for the kids awaited us at the door. We had stopped at a gas station to grab  drinks before heading there. To our disappointment, they had no flowers to purchase for Laura, which had Julia thanking here lucky stars later, we had forgotten Laura was the local florist. As the sun was out I again decided to proceed to the pool area to work on my stomach tan. Now Elk City is in the middle of a drought, they have not had a drop of rain for 7 months - surely I 'can not' bring rain by exposing my stomach to the suns rays. Well guess what.............within 20 minutes the grey clouds rolled in and the heavens opened! I was very quickly asked to become a permanent resident of the area to keep the rain coming!

Now Chy had mentioned that he was fond of cooking Brisket (not that we really new what that was other than a 'cut' of beef). It is an 18 hour process of marinating, smoking and slow grilling the meat. Served up with Pork Loins, Pork shoulder, chilli beans & potatoes! Wow - close to the best red meat we have ever eaten - pictured above - (not to detract from our juicy turkey for Thanksgiving mentioned earlier in the trip blog). Enjoyed by the pool with their close friends Larry & Rhonda, who then invited us the next night to share in their family feast of Meatloaf (Makalea's favourite), brisket,  red beans & rice, Baudoin, beans, fresh rolls & potatoes! This feast was as equally as amazing - the shear quantity of food would be the equivalent to two Christmas dinners!

During the course of the afternoon, as most Americans carry or possess fire arms, we had the chance to go out to a shooting range and fire off some rounds at some targets - WHOA!

Kenny will now sign up for National Service. See all pics. On our return I checked the sky and popped out to the pool - yep, it happened again!

These times are what our memories of America will be of. Good food and truly the most hospitable people you can imagine - not to mention trying to eat the nations entire food supply in one weekend!!We sincerely thank you all and hope that one day they can make the journey to Australia so we can return the favour - I will just get a spray tan for when you come across!

Headed south across the border down to Texas (state #26) - the lone star state!

Love to all, Team Connor USA xoxoxo

St.Louis - MISSOURI, IOWA, NEBRASKA and Kansas City - KANSAS!

St.Louis - Missouri! This is the Gateway arch. This is the biggest National Monument in the United States and is the gateway from the east to the west. It's enormous presence in the parkway just above the Mississippi River was breathtakingly stunning! Underground, below the arch is a museum and we found an elevator that could take us up inside the actual arch to the view area at the very top for 630 foot views over St. Louis.....aagghhh!

It was 110 degrees there that day (approx 43 Celsius) - HOT! So of course... we decided to take a paddle boat cruise up the Mississippi river. It was still a little in flood to where the water level normally sits, 13ft above that, with some carparks still under water but it was still very beautiful.

Back to the motel pool for cooling off. Next day - Scoop's best day in the States so far, would have been happy to go home, if  he had to. A Budweiser tour in the morning (with free beer). In one of the pictures you can see a vat, which, if Scoop had a beer, every hour, every day, it would take him 127 years to finish one vat! Then off to the St.Louis Rams NFL Training camp. I must admit being up this close to the NFL players was kind of cool......OK I'll admit it - it was AWESOME! One of the players even gave Jackson his playing glove at the end of the session.

At the end of our time in Missouri, we headed for Kansas City (home to the Wizard of Oz, Hallmark cards and Crayola crayons). Pritch, we haven't seen you yet! Went downtown and found a small amount of shops and a splash pad.

Kids played around most of the afternoon in the water. Another HOT day - 105 degrees F.

Left Kansas City in search of a couple more State signs - Iowa and Nebraska (states #23 and #24, half way in the state sign journey). Took a big detour on the way up the Interstate to Iowa as they had a lot of flood water still laying around - see pics. Hard to believe with the way the weather is- has been over 35 degrees every day for the last 10 days in the Mid West.

Were meant to stay up in Nebraska for the night, however we decided to drive back into Kansas as we had seen more than our fair share of corn for the day! The mid west apparently supplies over 3/4 of the world's corn - yes I would believe it!

On our way to Oklahoma City - Oklahoma tomorrow (#25) for a 3 night stop over.

Hope all our readers are keeping well. Stay safe.

Team Connor USA.  XOXOXO