Words only for now

I'm writing this from Leander, Texas, on the computer of a friend of ours, where we are staying for a few days. So far, we can't figure out how to get my computer to access his wireless network. There are some ways around this, but none of them work for me, so for now, no pictures, just a brief catching up.

Texas has a shifting landscape. Rolling green hills. Prairie. Cotton fields. Lots of very small towns: Early, Muleshoe, Lawn ... to name a few. Some with no traffic lights. Others with one.

I tried my first and last chicken-fried steak at lunch. It was served with a white gravy that to me seemed basically two parts water, one part milk, and 99 parts flour. As my friend explained to me, it's a carryover from the lunch served back in the days where that sort of excess was burned off by the hard working ranchers and farmers; but today seems way wrong.

Last night I hard my first Texas BBQ ribs. Yummy. Huge. And yet not the biggest order available. I was a complete amateur at eating them. Made a mess, but was encouraged to do so by my friends.

We toured Austin. Beautiful state capitol building. Some other buildings which I will show you in a later post that are very cool.

Also saw a huge modern high school football field shared by four different schools, I think. It holds around 10,000 enthusiatic fans.

Before we got here we visited the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert 100 miles east of Flagstaff. In many ways, Mike and I were more impressed by the Painted Desert than by the Grand Canyon. Somehow its awesome beauty was more accessible than the Canyon's.

More on all the rest when I can post photos and maps.

You are all welcome to post comments. Unknown to me until last night, apparently you have to open a free Google account to be able to post. Google's great. Think about it.

Be back soon.