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| Dave with steak salad |
Part three of the Best of 2015 blog reviews a bunch of restaurants that we encountered on our travels this year. Since this is the 'best of', only the places with a rating of four carrots or better are included. We found, or returned to, lots of good places to eat this year!
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| White Rock Lake |
There aren’t too many times that I actually go
to downtown Dallas, but I do end up in ‘North Dallas’ rather frequently.
Although ‘North Dallas’ used to be thought of as just north of downtown, the
area has grown to include the area all along Central Expressway. However, this
visit took me to a spot very near White Rock Lake. Although I’ve never been
there at night, many people have reported offering a young woman who is
dripping wet a ride to her home on Gaston Avenue. When they get to the house,
the woman has disappeared, leaving the car seat covered in water. The ‘Lady of
White Rock Lake’ was drowned during a boating accident in the 1930s.
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| Pittosporum |
Eons ago the big thrill in my young life was to
get to go to Arlington, Texas for dinner, or shopping. A bit later this was the
place to go on Friday or Saturday night to see and be seen on the University
drag, and even later still it was the location of the first home I owned. While
traffic is still a headache, the town has changed, growing larger and enticing
businesses, tourist attractions, and sports venues to the central part of the
Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
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| Grove Park Inn Grounds |
Once again a group of us made the trek to Black
Mountain, North Carolina for a week of laughs, hugs, creativity, and
togetherness (See Mountains
of Art for more information about this wonderful area). For the last 21
years a bunch of imaginative people have come together to fashion beaded
jewelry. This year wasn’t any different, except that now we are tapping the
teaching prowess of the members of our group to generate a variety of pieces.
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| Thurber Smokestack |
For years Dave has been visiting Thurber and Mingus to
celebrate the beginning of the deer hunting season. What he enjoyed, more than
the hunting, was the food that was available. Mingus, with its small downtown
not only has a post office, but a convenience store called the Feed, Seed and
Beer to Go. The area is full of West Texas whimsy. Thurber is now a tiny unincorporated
community in Erath County about 75 miles west of Fort Worth. However, between
1888 and 1921 it was one of the largest producers of bituminous coal in Texas
and the largest company town in the state. Thurber’s coal-mining operations
began in 1886 and peaked in the 1920s. The mining attracted workers from Italy,
Poland and Mexico to this company town that was owned by the Texas and Pacific
Coal Company (through their subsidiary the Texas Pacific Mercantile and
Manufacturing Company). This company served the Texas and Pacific Railway to
whom it provided fuel until 1920 when the locomotives converted from coal to
oil. The other industry booming in Thurber at this time was the production of vitrified
paving bricks; these bricks are still in use in Texas and in the southern half
of the US. Next door to Thurber is Mingus. Even though it’s smaller than Thurber, it has a
post office. Named for William Mingus, it was the location of the 1881
construction of the Texas and Pacific Railway. The community served local
farmers and ranchers, as well as a place for truckers and hunters to stop for
supplies and/or refreshments.
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| Bears at Elk Antlers Inn |
This was really a ‘trip down memory lane’ because we visited
many of the same places I had visited as a graduate student then later as an
instructor in field ecology. This trip, however, was different because on
previous visits we had camped, and cooked our own food. We stayed in some nice
places and ate some really remarkable meals. For information about my rating system, see Reading the
Reviews.
