In the great outdoors, a time to brace and a time to chase

What more do you need as an excuse to visit Dallas than the spectacle of bulls trying to throw off their riders, spectators trying to capture hapless sheep galloping around an arena at full tilt?

For me at least such a show was the main draw card that took me on a three-day visit to that city, perhaps more famous because of the TV show of the same name and as the place where President John F Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

But if cowboy culture were a brand, perhaps no other state could be said to own it as much as does Texas, once part of Mexico and annexed by the US in 1844. The tradition of rodeos has attracted visitors from all over the world, and I visited the most famous town of cowboys, Fort Worth, west of Dallas.