Arlington has this series of painted stars spread throughout the city. While I've never actively set out to find all of them (though that would make for a great hometown adventure), it's always delightful when I come across one in an unexpected place.
One of the most interesting oddities at the Stock Yards is the lightbulb which has been burning since 1908! It's the world's second-longest burning lightbulb. Back in 1977, the Palace Theater, where the bulb was installed, was scheduled for demolition. Locals realized how special this lightbulb was (it was already super old at the time), and saved it, moving it into the museum at the Stock Yards. Somehow, it has continued burning ever since!
Interestingly, there's a replica of the legendary One Pillar Pagoda outside of the supermarket. The original pagoda, which we visited a few years ago when we were spending the month in Hanoi, dates back nearly a thousand years.
After the wedding, my wife and I took our bridesmaid (one of Pinky's best friends who just happened to be in California this summer as well, and was able to make the trip out to Texas for our wedding) to the Fort Worth Stock Yards. She's a veterinarian too, specifically a livestock vet, so she was super excited to see Texas cowboy culture. Of course, we couldn't miss the daily cattle drive!
It was a fun, hot day out at the Stock Yards. I enjoyed it with a refreshing Shiner Sea Salt and Lime.
We also visited Sundance Square, the cool downtown artsy district in Fort Worth, where we had lunch and spent time at the Sid Richardson Museum. The free museum is a fantastic collection of cowboy art - specifically those works of premier artists of the American West, Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell.
While we were home, Pinky and I thanked my parents for hosting us for so long by cooking lots of homemade Thai dinners for them. Sometimes the ingredients we need for our recipes can be a little hard to find in north Texas, but fortunately, Texas is home to a very large Vietnamese-American population, and there's a wonderful Vietnamese supermarket in town where we were able to find everything that we needed.
Built to resemble a lotus blossom, the pagoda is one of the most important Buddhist holy sites in Vietnam. The one in the supermarket's parking lot is, I imagine, a bit younger than a thousand years. Still, I believe it must be a very important part in the Vietnamese population's cultural and religious celebrations throughout the year.
It can go a bit too far, of course, like this Best Maid Sour Pickle Beer, also brewed by Martin House in cooperation with Best Maid Pickles. It honestly just tasted like a can of pickle juice, and I didn't taste any beer at all. I had bought a six pack to try, but nobody else in my family would drink them, so I drank them all. Honestly, the pickle beer did start to grow on me (a bit) after a while.
I wrote a while back about Atomic Pumpkin, one of my new all-time favorite seasonal beers! There's another one that I discovered I really like: Mystic Mountain Blueberry by Martin House Brewing Company (a local brewery from Fort Worth). It's a sour, which nobody else in my family likes, but I do! I'm a big fan of Martin House. They are very experimental and very brave with their beers, and I love that there are breweries out there trying cool new things.
We took some of these beers out the Levitt Pavilion, which hosts free public concerts outdoors throughout the summer. The week we visited, Brave Combo, the famous polka band from Denton, was playing. It was one of the most fun concerts I'd ever been to, and we were up on our feet dancing the Chicken Dance, the Hokey-Pokey, and more throughout the night.
It wasn't just sours and pickle beers, though. I also went with my family to Legal Draft, a great Arlington brewery (which also supplies spent grain mash to feed the happy cows). The beers there are great (no pickles to be seen anywhere).
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