Airborne via US

Obviously enough, we made the flight no problem...  we left the hotel (again, highly recommended - Citizen M), and boarded the KLM A330-200, direct to Dallas!

To be fair, not much to say about the flight. I watched a film; an absolutely pointless two hours of 'Broken City'. Why, why, why did I choose to watch a Mark Wahlberg film? I mean, what else did I expect, except drivel.

However, I did also read a book - The Dog Stars. If you liked The Road, this is for you! Great modern American literature. Set me up just right!

So, after a few meals, a film, a book, a short sleep - there is really not that much change from 9 + hours, although I was determined to drop a friend off over the ocean...  ...and (of course) capture the moment for posterity (so to speak).

6 miles hi

We arrived in Dallas about 1400 local. No problems with immigration; in truth they were rather friendly, and fast. After a short diversion to buy a power adaptor, we found a taxi to Irving, and the Holiday Inn Express. We chose this hotel for our first (compulsory) stop, because it is the location from which the RV rental company pick up (free) from. I am fairly sure there is no other reason to stay at that hotel... ...clean enough, but I wasn't the least bit surprised to find 'REDRUM' written on our bathroom mirror.

Never mind. Just the one night... and we were jet-lagged anyway. We decided to fight the tiredness and head into Fort Worth for some food and a quick look around.

Sundance

Old n new Fort Worth

The Reata is one of the most famous of the 'cowboy culture cuisine' restaurants. Extremely good, and not so expensive (by European standards!!). I enjoyed the Cowboy Ribeye. Sarah tried not to gag on 'grits' (what IS that made of? - we settled on a theory of fried shredded cardboard).

This is what 16 oz tastes like

Took 2 hours to get back to the hotel, due traffic. We made a new friend though; the Nepalese driver who lived in Dallas! Damn, could that guy talk.

Fell into bed, and woke at 4am. Had to wait until 0730 to meet the driver for the lift to Camping World - in fact, it ended up being gone 0800 after the receptionist at the hotel sent the driver away, telling him that we had never checked in !?
'Oh, yeah. You're right! You are Mr Hickson...' she told me when I tried to point out her mistake.

E. J. Ahmed was our driver; a Bengali originally, and a slightly scary driver! All the same, we arrived at the RV centre in Denton, and collected our camper; S -126, otherwise known affectionately as camper S-126.

We got out of the depot, and headed straight for Walmart. :)  That's when our first real trip began....