west TEXAS

Tejas is sooo ENORMOUS I thought it deserved a post all it's own... and then I took so many pictures that it pretty much needed TWO posts. The first place we stopped in Texas was Pecos. Jake and I went into a gas station to get some hot water for our tea and an older gentleman held the door open for me so I thanked him. He replied with "Yes Ma'am." Then I went outside to stretch and a lady in an Oldsmobile pulled up next to our car, looked at the license plate and said, "Ya'll are a long way from home." I agreed and then she said, "Well enjoy Texas." When Jake came back out to the car I told him about the man who held the door from me and he said that he also thanked a different man for holding the door open for him and the guy replied with, "Yes Sir."

How awesome is Texas?! 

We've managed to stay off the interstate this entire trip so far and it's been great. We've seen a lot of good scenery and met a lot of good people. We're also highlighting our route in our Road Atlas which I wish I could share with all of you somehow but that seems like a big project to transfer onto a computer. After a night in Pecos we slept at one of the most serene places I've visited. Lake JB Thomas. We saw a lake on the map and so we figured out how to get there. It was another one of those times where Jake and I had the place all to ourselves. West Texas is not very exciting, but it's the perfect place to get away from everyone and everything. There's so much land!

And then the cotton started to show up. Jake was amazed at how cotton grows into a perfect cotton ball. It really is a pretty raw crop that doesn't seem like it needs a lot of refining. We pulled over and Jake picked a bunch of leftovers right off the side of the road. He stretched and twisted some for a while and made me a little cotton bracelet. Now he wants to make a pillow- that's Jake for ya. Just imagine what that man could do with unlimited resources! Along with the cotton fields came hundreds of windmills. So pretty! We also stopped at a few.... markets? I don't know what you would call them but these houses just had a bunch of crazy stuff in their yard for sale, and usually there was nobody there to sell it.

We drove through this little town called Mineral Wells which was really neat. There were a bunch of signs that read, "Keep Mineral Wells Krazy, drink Krazy Water!" There's a long story about a guy who dug out a well and after his family started drinking the water all of their health ailments magically disappeared. The town is really old and there's a beautiful, HUGE, abandoned hotel called Baker Hotel. It was meant to be a classy day spa with wining and dining in the evening to draw in the rich and famous. There are records of Clark Gable and other hotties staying there. This picture doesn't capture the grand impact of this building, but a picture is better than smelling all the bat poo wafting through the air in Mineral Wells because of that condemned hotel.

We kept driving east and the flatlands turned into beautiful rolling hills. The next 2 nights we stayed near Denton with a friend we met through CouchSurfing. For those of you who have never heard of it, go to their website and check it out. CS-ing is pretty much the coolest thing I've discovered this year. Then we went to Huntsville and stayed with some other CS friends. The whole point of visiting Huntsville was to talk with some professors about their Music Therapy program and see if it was something Jake would like. It was a really cute University town that caters to a lot of music, dance and art students. Our friend took us to an open mic night and Jake ended up playing some songs and then jamming with some locals for a few hours- another very "Jake" thing to do. It was a lot of fun AND Jake ended up learning how to hula hoop! He said he had never been able to do it before but after a few minutes he was turning heads!