We spent Thursday in Fort Worth. We went to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving (aka The Money Factory). They run 24 hours a day printing money. The tour guide said they only print enough money to replace the money that needs replacing. These days I am not so sure! They print 10's of billions of dollars worth of "notes" each year. It is actually an interesting and complicated process. They also have a department that takes mutilated or really messed up money and figures out how much it is worth. They even do it for free. Just a bit of trivia - if there is a star rather than a letter after the serial number on a note, it is a replacement for a sheet of notes that was found to be imperfect during the process. They have to replace the sheet since every sheet is accounted for and the final notes must be in numerical order. This is because when they are all finished, the notes must be registered by the Federal Reserve in order to be "real money".





Afterwards we went to The Stockyards. The kids loved the stockyard maze - they could finally be the animals they are!
























Twice a day, they herd some Texas Longhorns
down the street for the tourists (yes, that would be us).





























So, what is wrong with this picture.....?












Yesterday we drove from Fort Worth to Amarillo. We learned that we could drag the Outback if necessary but it is really better to release the emergency brake before driving! Thanks to some nice Texans, we only went a few miles with the brakes smoking. We also learned that it is hard to drive a big box with a 30 MPH cross wind. There is a lot of .... nothing between Fort Worth and Amarillo.