Trees! State parks! Whizzing by at 70 mph!

When I say Texas is big, I really mean that. Houston to Dallas on the main interstate is a breeze, if, as I have said, an ugly one. About a 4.5 hour drive, it's usually plagued with construction south of Dallas (which never seems to be completed) and has few interesting towns according to JJ. Interesting means, in his vocabulary, a real downtown that you drive through, lights and all, rather than a spiffy-fast bypass that takes you around the town and leaves you with two truck stops and a McDs to choose from in fine fast dining.

When you stray off the main interstates, though, there's a world of small towns with character dotted through the state highways. I never appreciated this when I was growing up in Beaumont, surrounded by small towns and tall trees, where Houston was The City, and Austin was Mecca. JJ has given me a new appreciation for them, especially ones I have to drive a fur piece to get to. I am a driving fool, apparently.

(So get out your atlas, my Evil Friend, and follow along.)

We left Houston (more properly, Cracker Barrel Restaurant - priorities!) around 9:30 in the morning, well-fed and ready to travel up 59. Once past the Kingwood suburb, I realized I had never travelled this section of road, despite living in Houston alomst 10 years, and close to Houston all my life. We meandered up to Cleveland, and into the edges of the Sam Houston National Forest. Big whoop, trees. Cleveland is a junction of several roads, which is how most small towns seem to have sprung up. The main neat thing about the area is it's about 20 minutes from the town of Cut and Shoot. Really. So on to Livingston and the lake. This is a favorite vacation spot for my hometown folks, but again, we never bothered to go there. I was itching for a view of the lake, because there IS access to the lake for poor people like us who can't afford lakefront property, but we had to move on and I can always go back. We did wonder, as we passed the golf course, whether we were still close enough to Houston for this economy to be dependent on the big H. Houston's influence spreads far, for sure. When you see wee towns up in the woods with "Welcome Back Rocket!" signs heralding Roger Clemens' return to the Astros, you know Houston is felt all over the state.

On to Moscow, Texas, which we almost missed blinking, and then Diboll and Lufkin. Somewhere in that stretch is the Timber Industry, which is a good place to find it, being surrounded by trees and all. Tall pine trees that, in places, have managed to keep out the sun for decades. And believe me, some of the people look as though they've not seen the sun as well. Between the tree farms and the National Forests, we're driving in a teeny valley of road between mountains of trees on either side. Towns look as though they were carved out of the surrounding trees, or asteroids cleared space for them years ago. Most towns in Texas look purposeful, but this stretch looks as though people settled where they dropped from exhaustion. Imagine hacking through that forest without bulldozers. Ugh.

Lufkin is certainly civilized enough to have a clean grocery store restroom and, I notice, another Sonic Drive In next to it. Let me say, Sonic is essential for road trips for me. Must. Have. Large. Coke. So appropriately restocked and refreshed, we're on the road again. State park here, state park there, and look! Another state park! Thank heaven JJ isn't the kind who has to stop at every Point of Interest (I swear in Texas they're labelled that way on highway signs) because it's about 2 p.m. when we pull into Jacksonville and I'm starving. In and out of the Love's Lookout, and we're off to Tyler. And Subway, and ergo, salvation. Except JJ's sandwich is better than mine, and I hate that, though it's nice that he shares. And all the Little Critter wants is a salad, except then there's a cookie and chips and bottled raspberry water and jeepers, we dropped well over $25 in there! Budget blown in 5 hours, and we're gone for three days.

The rest of the trip I've recorded from that day, except we pull into Gainesville and JJ's mom calls and says: "Oops, the hotel made the reservation for the wrong weekend." HUH? So we're now going to be in a motel around the corner from the hotel everyone else is staying in, and I completely lose it. At this point it's 6:00 p.m. and I really wanted to check in, unpack, chill out, eat, and then go see the family for a bit. Instead we're off to Gram's where JJ and his mom leave the LC and me while they go deal with the motel. I am now approaching lividity. I love these people but for Pete's sake, I've had a long long drive, of which I've done most of the driving, and I'm not up to a full-bore reunion yet. The poor LC is the only young child there, and obviously bored, but we sit thorough it and chat and smile and wait for JJ to return and tell us yes, we do have a room for the night, and we'll move to the other hotel the next day. I had nightmare visions of sleeping on Gram's couch, and I'm temporarily supremely grateful at this news.

Lesson learned: make all your own travel arrangements. Then you know who to yell at when it goes to crap.

Back at the motel, we're stumbling in and realize, hey! Dinner! We forgot! So we discover there's another Sonic nearby (YAY!) and Wendy's and McDs and Taco Bell. I end up with just a caramel banana split from Sonic, and get the other two fed, and then we can collapse.

Except (there's always an "except" isn't there?) that the motel has the under-the-window cooling unit which cuts on and off at irregular intervals, keeping me up all night until I run out of wrecked sleep at 7 and wake with a contact ripped in two in my eye.

At this point, I am approaching a Very Dangerous Mood. And JJ is already three weeks into the doghouse for something else, and I can feel this whole trip is going to sit very heavily on his shoulders unless it gets better in a hurry.