Dust Bowl

After a three day stay in Shreveport, LA where we had to wait for a car part and busied ourselves with hair cuts and playing in a surprisingly nice casino, we have succeeded in reaching another state. Welcome to the Lone Star State of Texas. I've never seen more broken down, ghostly gas stations in the entire country as I have here. Ironic because isn't this where a lot of the oil comes from? We drove today through high winds and bright sun. It was exhausting and kicked up all kinds of allergies, not to mention caused Sequoia to go grey instead of black. I didn't think this was one of the states in the dust bowl, but I think I was wrong! We had intended to come west by way of I-10 so we could stop and see the Alamo, but since we were already north at I-20 and lost a few days we decided to skip it. We'll just have to hit that on the next loop around going back east.

We stopped and had lunch in Midland, TX, the home of George and Laura Bush. I'm thinking we didn't see their part of town, though it was much bigger than I expected. We spent last night near Abeline and I thought that was the only big town west of Dallas. Big is a relative term. I'm now revising my thoughts that is there is a major grocery store in the town then it's big. If the grocery store, post office and gas station are one store, then its small, but if it has none of those things, then it's not really a town but someone's farm. Tonight we are in Ft. Stockton, TX and I think there is a grocery separate from the post office. I know there is a historic fort here that we hope to see tomorrow.

Leaving the east coast has been more stressful than planned. We are a great case study for the more you drive, the more things break. We are ready to enjoy the west without anything else breaking. I do have a dead car towing behind us, but that's not really a new problem and has a remedy I can fix myself. But these little pit stops for service are really stressing me out more than usual. Don't know why exactly. All I can think is we had a bit of a reprieve for a few months while we were moving only two hours at a time in Florida and things didn't seem to be breaking. Now it feels like they are happening all at once. Today I had to stop at a truck stop and ask them to check my truck oil because it looked like it was splashing onto our car. We think this started happening because of elevation gain because he said our oil is over full and we never even filled it. For all of you who are envious of our mid-life expedition, hate to say it, but this part of the trip is not fun. Of course it can't be all roses all the time.

Hoping for a little R&R in the wilderness. It's nearly 100 degrees down here and I'm ready to see some Jackalopes (what I call the really large jack rabbits...it's a long story). Just got to avoid the poisonous snakes. Big Bend National Park here we come! It better be worth it.
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