The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

Well, rain has finally come our way. Last night we were treated to spectacular lightning displays which lit up the flat East Texas plain. It rained hard all night and the lightning lasted all night too. It was still raining as we loaded the van, but, serendipitously, it stopped and we were able to get our 75 mile bike ride in without much rain at all. Tomorrow we may not be as lucky, for a giant low is stalled over Louisiana, our destination tomorrow night. YES, Louisiana! We are about to leave the Lone Star state at last.

Texas and Texans get a lot of negative press in other regions. I think it is human nature to resent anyone or any institution which is larger than life, so big it can’t be ignored, but so big it can be resented. I know that I was mildly unhappy that we were ‘condemned’ to spend 43% of our entire trip in this state.

Yet Texas has slowly been winning me over. Because it is so large, it is a mistake to lump the landscape, the people, the flora or the fauna into one stereotype. The western desert around El Paso was inhospitable for sure, but the buttes, mesas, old fort towns and steep canyons were certainly dramatic. The hill country was challenging for us cyclists, but full of charming towns like Utopia and La Grange with people right out of Norman Rockwell. East Texas is heavily forested; indeed today we pedaled through part of the Big Thicket National Preserve. This dense forest was so impenetrable that it was not settled until the 1870s; both Indians and settlers gave it a wide berth. However, the Big Thicket was the hiding place of Confederate draft dodgers and deserters during the Civil War – called Jayhawkers. Although the Confederate Army set the Big Thicket on fire to force the men out, 300,000 untouched acres of the Big Thicket have been preserved.

Yes, Texas is a fascinating and attention grabbing place. I will leave with many warm (and dusty) memories of this gigantic state.

We lunched in the town of Kountze at an Almost Famous (so they advertise) diner called Mama Jacks. Mama herself was at the register. She was a surprising svelte blond lady, given the rotundity of her clientele. She told me that the restaurant was started by her husband and was originally called Papa Jacks. But seeing he was always leaving Mama to run the place while he was off doing other things, when they moved locations she changed the name – to Mama Jacks. We enjoyed an all you can eat lunch buffet of gumbo, salmon burgers, fried zucchini and your choice of six kinds of potatoes and more than six types of fruit cobblers. Whatever wasn’t fried was swimming in gravy. We ate like condemned men due to the cold clammy weather.

Tonight we had another first, Jose’s Pizzaria, a Mexican Italian restaurant. I know, only in Texas. My Shrimp and Chicken Alfredo had a tortilla underneath the noodles. We shared this meal with the Adventure Cycling group we call the five guys. They are on a tight budget – all five rent one hotel room and three sleep on the floor. We will see lots more of the five guys , for they finish in St. Augustine the same day we do on November 21st. We swapped stories of our adventures to date, the tales already getting taller in the retelling.