Thanks to Lady Bird Johnson!

For those of you not old enough to remember, Lady Bird Johnson was responsible for the beautification of U.S. highways by planting wildflowers in the medians and on the roadsides. This morning as we left Big Springs, TX, we started noticing bluebonnets (the Texas state flower) alongside I-20. What a treat! Bluebonnets; pink (buttercup? primroses?); yellow (3-4 different kinds); red-orange (Indian paintbrush); pink/purple (lupine); white (tall, spikey things?). Just lovely. We'd never seen West Texas so green. They must've had lots of rain this spring.

We did get into some major rain today. We stopped for lunch at Weatherford (just west of Fort Worth), and as we left there, the sky just opened up. John had taken over the driving because he wanted to be the one driving through D/FW. Fortunately, it did slack off before we got into the cities, although it did rain some most of the way through. We did go through some more rain in eastern Texas, but nothing that bad. Poor John - he had all the fun today - rain, Dallas/Fort Worth, and construction zones. I'm sure he'll see that I have more "fun" tomorrow.

We're in Bossier City, LA, tonight - just barely into LA. But since we're here, we had to look for seafood and/or Cajun food. Would you believe there's a Ralph & Kacoo's just a few blocks from the motel we chose. Anyone who has been to New Orleans knows this chain and what good food they serve. We had appetizers and shared: crawfish etouffe, crab cakes, mushrooms stuffed with crabmeat. Yum!!! (You did understand that you were in for travels and food adventures with John and Mary when you started reading this, didn't you?)

Well, it took us a day and a half to get across Texas, and we plan to do Louisiana and Mississippi and get into Alabama tomorrow. There's not much navigation involved in travelling on the interstate. Oh, yes - I forgot - we did have a digression today. Just west of the Kilgore exits, we saw some temporary signs along the road saying "Accident ahead". Oops! It must be a big one if they've had time to put out signs. We got off the interstate and went almost to Kilgore, before find another road heading back north to I-20, but farther east. We wound up going 25 miles, and re-entered I-20 15 miles further east. But at least we weren't sitting still or crawling along getting around the accident.

Bad weather is predicted to come through this area tonight. And we'll probably get some rain the rest of the way home. But I hope nobody gets anything too bad - and we surely don't want it along the highway.

Today's picture was taken at the Mountain Ute Tribal Park.