Dallas

Day 26

After arriving in the clean air of Dallas yesterday, we booked into the beautiful Fairmont Hotel. We went for a walk, had lunch and visited the Dallas Museum of Art featuring art and beauty of the 20’s.

This morning we headed off to walk to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza where Oswald fired the shots that killed John F Kennedy. We went through the museum but it still didn’t answer the questions raised by the conspiracy theory. In a survey in 1970 only 11% of Americans believed that Lee Harvey Oswald did it alone. We walked outside to look at the grassy knoll, the cross on the road where JFK was hit (where Ian is standing) and the line of sight to the 6th floor window. He would have to have been an excellent shot.

We then visited Pioneer Plaza with its large cattle sculptures commemorates nineteenth century cattle drives that took place along the Shawnee Trail, the earliest and easternmost route by which Texas longhorn cattle were taken to northern railheads. The trail passed through Austin, Waco, and Dallas until 1867. The 70 bronze steers and 3 trail riders are larger-than-life at six feet high; all together the sculpture is the largest bronze monument of its kind in the world.

Adjacent to the plaza is the Pioneer Park Cemetery which features the Confederate War Memorial with statues of Jackson & Lee as well as the Women of the Confederacy.

It is a beautiful cool day here today after the 38⁰C heat of Las Vegas.