December 2, somewhere in Texas

Friday, December 2, 2011

The day began as mild and slightly overcast with an occasional patch of blue, and proceeded to go downhill from that point on as we left Mt. Pleasant, Texas to go farther west.  By the time we had gone through Dallas and were approaching  Ft. Worth, we were almost completely socked in by fog.  It was really eerie to be in the middle of the Dallas/Ft. Worth area with their huge buildings and not be able to see any structures and those we were able to view had no tops!  That’s how low the visibility was by the time we’d gone a little over one hundred miles.  But what a view we were accorded during that time.  Everywhere we looked on both sides of the highway were gently rolling, grassy fields with cows grazing; huge tracts of land protecting beautiful horses and huge mansions hemmed in by fences having ornate gates with signs proudly announcing which ranch we were passing.  The openness of the land reminded us of Australia’s vast  fields with their “wool  bushes”.  No sheep here, today, that we saw but we did see an armadillo lying on it’s back with the four feet in the air and staring blankly at the misty sky above.  The long-horn cow Dan saw was really big, according to him.  I’ll have to take his word.  I was too busy looking at all the muted fall colors.  It’s almost winter and the hardwood trees in this area still are clothed in leaves of various shades of rust, olive green, deep maroon, with an occasional  burst of yellows from willow trees.  The dark green of the cedars were almost black until you saw them close up and could see their splashes of grey-blue berries.  After we passed Ft. Worth on our way to our campground for the night, we were surprised to see cacti growing on the banks of the road under the shade of the cedar trees.  There were also straight live oak trees.  We are so used to seeing wind-swept ones we forget not all live oaks lean to the north!  If we have seen Mesquite before, it was when Kryn was thirteen months old and we camped from Columbus, Ohio to Richardson, Texas to see one of our professors from Indiana University.  He was also Dan’s best man at our wedding.

We did ask as to why there are so many brown cedar trees mixed in with those lining the roads and were told they were dead from the drought of this past summer.  Lakes and rivers we crossed were low and docks jutted out into dry land.

Since my right shoulder and my left hip are becoming more and more  sore each day, we decided to get a mattress topper for our bed.  I had hoped I’d get used to feeling every joint in my body with no problem, but that was not the case.  You should have seen the two of us trying to make the bed in a fully loaded trailer with a cat chirping and running around chasing another fly that had gotten in today.  On second thought, maybe not!

Dan was thrilled.  He found a Cici’s Pizza for lunch.  We had salad for supper.