Texas Might be Tired of Us

I reckon that if this keeps up, Texas might officially uninvite us to their state. Seems like lately, every time we go down there, we bring the snow with us. I hope they are enjoying it rather than being perturbed. It seems to be the way it is, but they might eventually tire of it after the novelty wears off.

Thursday morning as we approached our delivery in Winnsboror, TX it started snowing lightly, and within the hour had dusted the ground, even though it wasn't quite below freezing.

We drove 45 miles north to Mount Pleasant to reload and ended up sitting there almost all day waiting our turn. It snowed a steady, gentle, wet snow all day long and by 5:00pm when we finally turned our wheels west towards California, Mount Pleasant didn't look so pleasant anymore.

We actually only went 30 miles or so, fueled, and parked it for the night. The roads weren't bad, but we were feeling extremely unmotivated and since we had 4 days, we figured why bother.

The next morning the sun broke through the thin clouds and revealed a white, white world. The forecast I read predicted 1-3 inches for the area. But when I took the girls out, after I sloshed through parking lot slush, jumped a big puddle, and waded through some snow covered mud, I found myself walking in at least 5, maybe 6, inches of snow. It was, according to one friendly Texan, the biggest snow they'd had in over a decade easily.

The roads had been slick in places over night, but had cleaned up nicely, and were almost dry. Since the area we were parked in had lost power (the snow was heavy on all the tree limbs so I'm sure that was the culprit), we headed out without breakfast, figuring to just stop later somewhere...which we did...at the every present Texas Dairy Queen.

Along the way, driving north of Dallas on 380, it was so much fun to see how Texas reacted to the snow. First we were shocked to see families and neighborhoods gathered for sledding. The shock was not that they were sledding, but where they were sledding. They were parked on the shoulders and sledding down the hillsides of the Interstate exit ramps, where the road department had built up the road when the exits were put in! Seriously...whole crowds of people huddled up against the guard rail waiting their turn as trucks and the few cars that were out zoomed by at regular speed since the roads were dry. I hope they all had fun, and no one got hurt!

Second thing we saw that I loved was that EVERYONE had built a snowman! There were snowmen with no features, snowmen with garden hose arms, all sizes, shapes, and even one with crutches! You know that saying that everying is bigger in Texas?

Probably this was the biggest snowman I've ever seen. The picture doesn't truely reveal his height, but if you look close you'll see it apparently took a step ladder to get him built, and if I'm not mistaken, it appears that a truck or other vehicle was backed up to him to assist in his being erreceted as well.

So in addition to state pride, I guess we can add that Texans know how to have fun in any situation! Where as most Montanans huddle up to the heater inside when there is snow on the ground and complain about it snowing....again....I loved seeing all the people out enjoying their holiday from school and work, playing in the snow. The most wonderful sight of the whole morning was a sweet couple standing by their snowman in their front yard with huge smiles on their faces waving at us as we drove by, with snow all over their clothing...and they were probably in their 70's at least. I wish I'd gotten that picture!