Longhorns and Tim as chef

Gas station near McKinney, Texas.

The restaurant visit in McKinney the previous day meant that the first goal of the day was exactly McKinney. The reason for this was that one of the gentlemen, we had chatted with on the market the day before, had told us that one of his acquaintances had Texas Longhorns out on a field in that direction. As we were beginning to believe that these longhorned cows are only mythical creatures, we wanted see them - just to maybe change out minds on whether they actually existed. As Tim also thought he might have spotted such an animal when were going to McKinney to eat Mexican, we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. But once again we were disappointed. We saw a lot of cows, but none with horns longer than usual. So at that time we were still convinced that they were only a fable like bigfoot or the ozark howler. Just before we reached McKinney, we filled up the car at a RaceTrac gas station with just a few pumps. Well, they know "how to make things bigger and better" in Texas.

As cows were not available, we decided to to take a look at downtown McKinney, which proved to be a pretty cozy town. When we had seen enough, we headed for a Walmart on the outskirts of town. However, it turned out to be somewhat cumbersome to get there, as our "guide" (who on this occasion was Google Maps on our respective phones as we had not brought a GPS) insisted on taking us on a toll road, which we were desperately trying to avoid as we did not have an electronic payment "thingy". We could have used "pay-by-plate", but as I've mentioned in previous years' diaries, the rental companies charge a not insignificant fee for this service. In the end, however, we managed to get to the supermarket without getting on the toll road - and instead we saw a suburban area that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. At Walmart we got what we came to get; brushes for my electric toothbrush, razor blades and shaving gel as well as a shirt for me. Tim bought some Black Panther action figures, sd maybe more. I domn't remember.

McKinney is located southwest of Bonham (where we were staying at Granny Lou's B&B), but instead of heading back to this town, we pretty much headed north, driving 30 miles to the town of Sherman. McKinney, which we left has upwards of 170,000 residents and is actually a suburb of Dallas albeit quite far from the city center, almost like Ringsted compared to Copenhagen (which you probably don't know anything about anyway - so a bad example), except that there is urban development all the way from Dallas to McKinney. There are also more than 7 million inhabitants in Dallas Metro Area. Compared to this, Sherman comes up short with its only 40,000 inhabitants and Bonham is even smaller with only 10,000. But now we had arrived in Sherman. Once there we parked the car and walked around looking at the town center. Here we studied among other things, the court house (which shows that the town is county seat). The town is named for General Sherman. No, not William Tecumseh Sherman, who became famous during the American Civil War, but for General Sidney Sherman, one of the heroes of the Texan Revolution, when the area seceded from Mexico. Bonham, incidentally, is named after James Bonham, who was one of the heroes killed at The Alamo in San Antonio in 1836 together with other heroes like James Bowie, Davy Crockett and Danish Charles Zancho. But now I digress. However, I just have to mention that Sherman was the town where William Jefferson Blythe Jr. was born. Haven't you heard of him? Probably not that strange, unless of course your'e an American, and especially a Texan from Sherman. Anyway, he was actually the father of William Jefferson Blythe III! Blythe Jr. died three months before William III was born, and when his mother remarried he took his stepfather's name and thus became William (or Bill) Clinton - the later president. Like that!

Texas Longhorns in a field between Sherman and Bonham, Texas.

When there was no more we wanted to see in Sherman, we set off for Bonham and our B&B. On the way we suddenly spotted a bunch of Texas Longhorns, and unlike the ones we had been introduced to the year before, which were presumably only ordinary short-horned cows dressed up to make us happy, these were actually for real and had quite long horns. We wanted to photograph them, but where we noticed the cows the four-lane road was divided by a median strip so we couldn't just turn around and go back. We therefore had to continue for a few miles until we reached a break in the median where it was possible to make a U-turn. Then we headed back and turned unto a smaller road, from which there were good views of both cows and horns. Here we took a lot of good and I'll admit some not so good photos of the long-horned before we continued back to our B&B. Later we visited Shaggy and her family; this time her husband was home and we stayed there for about an hour to make arrangements on where and when to meet later. We were going to visit Addie, where Tim was supposed to be a chef, and make spaghetti bolognese according to his own recipe that the Texans did not know.

Around 6 after doing some shopping, we then headed to Addie's place. She lived some distance away and we had only been there once, but we had no problems gfnding the place. When we got there Tim immediately started working on the food, which ended up being quite excellent. There were other guests besides us and with the children and all, Tim had to cook for seventeen people, but both bolognese and spaghetti were excellent, and there was so much food that Addie and her family could live on it for at least another day - which they did not, however, as the next day it was their turn to cook, so the left-overs was put away in the freezer. When we were visiting Shaggy in the afternoon, she was busy making "flødeboller", and she had brought these so everyone could have a homemade "flødebolle" for dessert. They were excellent too, and we have later heard that she has made even more, and actually had them for sale in the coffee shop where she works and pretty much sold them out in record time.

After dinner we played a game, with the two oldest kids, Squirrel and Squeaker as they were called, and it was great fun. I forgot what the game was called, but it was a kind of association game with some "picture cards" that each were dealt four of. Then a sentence was read, and then you had to find the picture among the four that you thought best illustrated the sentence. The dealer then selected the card that he or she thought was best associated with the sentence, and whoever had that card was the winner. Then the next person dealt and so on. We played until there were no more cards left, and at that time we had played for more than an hour. It was past 10 pm and we felt it was time to drive home to the B&B, and the children - at least the youngest of them - were going to bed as well. On the way home, we met a coyote, who crossed a field right in front of us at a T-junction, but otherwise nothing happened so we could relax in the room for an hour before bedtime. Our little excursion had given us exactly 138 miles on the odometer, so it was not a long trip, but longer than the day before though.

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