Travelog - Day 4, Feb 4

Feb 4– Day 4 6:18 am. It’s still dark on the I-30; we’re an hour ahead in Central time zone.

6:40am Broesco Ranch, our first big cattle ranch. On the east side more cattle with many of the cattle moving along at an orderly rate. These animals know how to form a queue.

Exit 154 promises Paris & Pittsburgh. Next, possibly a quarry with giant crane-like ladder structure to move ground stone to the top of enormous piles. It is completely outlined with bare naked light bulbs which are lit. From an earlier distance I mistook it to be a suspension bridge. Three more can be seen in the distance.

7:25 am Dallas is 105 mi. Is it too early to drop in on JR, Sue Ellen, Bobby, et al at South Fork? The sky is clear with a full moon looking straight at us.

Villa Maria - surrounded by impressive fencing with an even more impressive set of pillar gates. Iron fencing surrounds the accompanying fields all along the highway, each entrance flanked by stone pillars to support double gates. Oceanspray factory on our right. The roadway alternates between rough washboard and smoother ashpalt-covered concrete. Sulphur Springs is off to the west, but this highway section is very built up with restaurants, motels, tractor, heavy equipment sales. A billboard screams ‘robotic heart surgery’. Two-lane feeder roads have been accompanying us on either side for miles now for a total of 8 traffic lanes. The countryside is flat with fields – cattle & horses abound. Two-storey, red brick branch houses with white Georgian columns stands very tall. Somewhere along the way a railway line has joined us.

8:00am Highway marker says mile 110. From where to where I wonder. Black Jack Package Store tells us this county is not ‘dry’. We’re back to fields and country. Greenville is the next city. The moon has all but disappeared in the haze ahead of us – Dallas I presume, 53 miles away. I just caught my first glimpse of cacti, growing like weeds along the fencelines. A billboard announces the Audie Murphy Cotton Museum.

Radio update. Get a photo of your DNA to hang on the wall from DNA Artwork. Superbowl (Colts vs Bears) is unbelievably hyped. Christian churches plan to use this Sunday to spread the gospel after big screen viewing of the game producing the inevitable lawsuits from the NFL who see these activities as a copyright violation.

Gas stop just outside of Rowlett where I am dumbfounded I thought 24 oz. Was super-size – wrong, wrong, wrong! Can you believe 48 oz., surely more than a whole pot of coffee. Al is seduced into buying his first hot dog; I go for a 16 oz coffee (smallest available) and a Dunkin Donut cruller, a handspan long and a thumb’s length wide – my sugar fix for some time to come
Rowlett City looks very new with a marina the size of the village of Merrickville where we live. It is joined by two rather long causeways, each divided into two parts to touch the land on the east which juts out into the water. I watch a boat swiftly moving across. Then I spot the pelicans with long orange beaks sitting in the water, their white feathers a shocking white contrast to the blue water. A series of square, 3-storey, brick-clad buildings with steep octagonal roofs overlooking the large expanse of lake catch my eye. Condos mostly have similar 2-tone colour schemes, variegated tan, asphalt shingles, beige siding with darker tan contrast at the corners and windows. Resemble our house except we have 3 colours: beige siding, deep rose cedar strip next to white windows then a wider one in spruce green.

S&T and I have our second disagreement of the trip. It says take 58B (north) whereas 58C is south. Split second decision, I side with S&T. Wrong as I watch the red arrow on the laptop screen turn north. Al’s instinct was correct. Meanwhile, the screen message says ‘proceed to route’, not ‘off route’. One quarter way around on the Dallas ring road we do the off & back on trick. There were 4 or 5 other opportunities, but travelling in the right hand lane is not an option due to the very close proximity of temporary concrete barriers. Each exit is extremely abrupt. You can hardly see it before it is long gone.

Sights south of Dallas on I-20: in Red Oaks, TX, the Oaks Fellowship Life School parking lot is a sea of cars and this is Saturday. Owens Corning Factory on the left is more than massive. Evangel Temple, a low lying set of building with dome roofs occupies a few acres alongside the Interstate as well.

Perhaps you’re wondering how I manage to write so much. Perhaps you’re wishing I wouldn’t. (The good thing about email – the delete key is always available and I’ll never know, so my feelings remain intact.) Perhaps you’ve already figured it out, but just in case. Picture me sitting in the passenger seat with the laptop balanced on the tips of my kneecaps almost. They do get tired from the weight and I’m convinced they actually move the laptop forward until I have to push it away yet again. The mouse sits sideways on my upper lap, wires dangle everywhere. My grade 9 keyboarding students would be snickering if they could see my wrists, not just sitting, but firmly pressing onto the front part of the keyboard. It’s the most reliable way of keeping my fingers in the vicinity of the keyboard while I watch the countryside. They also serve to balance and steady it on a fairly level plane. So there! I’ve developed an entirely new keyboarding technique for passenger vehicles only.

This section of the highway is rather mind-numbing. I don’t complain as the driver is more relaxed, eg. just one hand on the steering wheel.

Checking the map before we leave, I realize that we have not gone out of our way. Back to Hewitt and hang a right going south and we hook up with I-35 once again.

2:52pm 25 km outside of Austin The Interstate has been an 8 lane with 2 feeder roads on both sides for some time. We pass through/under the first of many 4-tier interchanges. Industry, retail (Lowe’s is big), residential suburbs, more overpass construction – all the big city trappings. The typography is very similar to Calgary, Alta., Canada.

Oak Forest RV Park with its paved roads/pad and lighthouse-style hookups is east of the city itself. Many of the sites have a tree. Sitting here while I wait for him to make an arrangement I notice a 5th wheel immediately to my right. It has a ‘mini’ propane tank, same profile as the big ones only about 6 ft. long. A medium-sized mobile home has a dog sitting outside under a potted palm.

Al informs me that we are a day early, but not to worry because “the lady said she would find a place for us”. 3:15pm He returns to get his copy of the reservation; the RV park has lost our reservation. It all works out in the end as we are assigned a spot at the top of a drive with a view looking outside the park.

We quickly set up and then venture out looking for the nearest grocery store which is described as a ‘low end’. I’m imaging a ‘no frills’ kind of place, hence limited selction. Perhaps it more accurately reflects the cliental it attracts. No matter. It is a very large grocery store that has everything imagineable, a barrel of dried pinto beans and at least 12 different types of dried peppers. It is more than enough for us. We get our gallon jug of wine, in addition to pork chops, canned greens, yogurt, etc.

Thus ended our day.