Go West!

We started the day in Vicksburg, MS…just on the border of Louisiana. Our day started a bit later than I had hoped. But we were both exhausted and the bed was so comfortable that it was hard to leave! But we had a big day ahead of us---Texas! It doesn’t get much bigger than that!

I was on the first shift to drive. LA was easy to drive until we hit Monroe. That’s when I got a real taste of what it was like to drive in the deep-south. But what gave me a real laugh was when we hit Shreveport. OMG—I’m clipping along and a pick-up stacked to the hilt with stuff pulls onto the highway. And there is a dude nearly handing off the back! I wish we had taken a picture—it would have been a classic.

We reached the Texas border at high noon. Way behind my desired scheduled—alas—we dealt. We stopped at the first welcome center and this is where I got the indication that they do EVERYTHING bigger in Texas! The rest stop was big…heck, all the brochures they had…they had them divided by region. See what I’m saying…bigger. With an array of reading materials in hand we took a couple tourist pictures and we were off! However, I was relieved of my driving duties.

We made the decision to fore go any formal sit down meal. From my one past experience of being in Texas I told Rich that the Whataburger is a pretty fine burger---as fast food burgers go. It’s been 10 years since I last had one so I knew it was a risk. But it was either that or a Carl Jr.’s. That’s just Hardees with a different name…and well….yuck.

We walked into the Whataburger and you would have thought we had just stepped off a space craft and had four heads a piece because every eye was on us. I though OMG—do we look THAT much like tourists?? How do I explain what I saw? The place was packed. What I found interesting was that each table was occupied by multiple generations of families. Like this was the hot spot to eat. Everyone had full value meals and the rate they were eating one would have thought some of these people had not eaten in days. I must say—Texans are serious about their beef. Kudos to me though, Rich really dug Whataburger.

We passed through Dallas/Ft Worth. This metro area makes Atlanta look like a small hick town. It is sprawling! We broke free of the Dallas area and made up some time between there and Abilene.

As I type, the sun has set and we are still driving. I must comment on the sunset. The location we stopped, in my opinion had such a unique beauty. There were windmills as far as the eye could see, generating natural power. The sun was dropping just below the horizon and the breeze was very nice. The sky went on forever! Just 24 hours prior to that moment we were fighting our way out of Atlanta. Rich and I just looked at each other, took in this beautiful sunset and tried to wrap our brains around this moment. It was perfect.