January 14, 2005 - Drive to Dallas, Texas

The day dawned clear but cool-good weather for completing our drive to Dallas and coping with the city traffic. We slept in a bit, had a quick breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon, and we on our way by 9:30. We stopped at the Texas Welcome Center as we crossed the border into Texas, and they had a lot of interesting information on each section of the state but nary a brochure, map or hint about any bike trails in the state. Now Texas is a huge, sprawling, diverse state, and I must say I found it hard to believe that there were no bike trails anywhere in the state. It was quite a contrast to states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota that all had extensive bike trails and usually provide information about them at their information centers. Hello there, Great State of Texas, are you listening?

As we drove west for the next 3 hours, the ecology changed from the small hills and pine forests of eastern Texas to much flatter farmland and pastureland in the area just outside of Dallas. That was also where we started to see our first ranches with the ubiquitous pick up trucks and horse trailers out front, and lines of old junked cars out back. In Dallas we circled north on the I-635 ring road until we could turn north on Interstate 35 to get to Lewinsville Park campground. That turned out to be a great campground; we had a beautiful flat paved site overlooking a large lake with water and electric hookups for only $8 a night with the 50% Senior discount. After unhitching and setting up the trailer, we had a nice lunch of Gumbob (for the secret recipe see Wanderung 1) and drove back south on I-35 a few miles to Carrollton where my niece Beth and her family lived.

In fact, we met her as we were driving in and she recognized us and guided us the final block to their nice house in a fairly new subdivision. My sister Lois and Beth's son Carson were already there, so we all talked and talked and talked while Beth fixed dinner for the clan. Of course, Carson and I took some time out to play with his paper airplanes and a big inflated rubber ball. It looked familiar, which was strange because we had never visited Beth in that house before, and I finally recognized it as being the exact type of Pilates ball that I had been so reluctant to hug back in Auburn. It was almost like meeting an old friend, and Carson and I got some good use out of it by rolling it back and forth and even trying to dribble it past each other-these balls are so big and soft that they are really hard to dribble, by the way. Beth, Carson, and I drove over to pick up Carrie for dinner, and Audie, their Dad, came home from his second job in time to join us. After dinner, Beth went right back to working on the Afghan that Monika had crocheted for Peanut-Beth was really excited about getting the backing and trim sewed on to complete it. Beth's house, I might add, had 5 or more tremendous examples of the quilting art hung from the walls.

In fact, last year Beth won a 2nd place prize in the Texas state fair for one of her quilts, so you should believe me when I say these pieces are really works of art. I have seen quilts made by professionals sold for high prices in stores which were almost the equal of Beth's, but very seldom have I seen a piece at any price that I like better than hers.

Monika and I started mentally fading out around 8 p.m., so we headed back to our campground, stopping to replenish some supplies like milk, orange juice, canned meat, bread, luncheon meat, and cheese. Back at camp we each worked a bit on the computers before we shut everything down and turned in for the night.