Show Some Respect -- (Part Three)

Mmm, breakfast...feeling much better with a full belly, we paid and prepared to leave....on the way out though, we heard a great line from a local:

"It's been so dry, this morning I had to dust off my catfish."

With a smile on our faces, I rang the bell just outside the front door of the restaurant, and we continued on our way.

Our quest this morning was to see if we could find my grandmother's farm in Gray, TX. We were near (ish) the town, so it didn't take long to drive there, but once in Gray, the task became tricky. See, I hadn't been on the farm since I was 10 years old...and my grandparents on that side of the family had died some 5 or so years before...I hadn't heard from the uncle who inherited the land since shortly after that, and my father only gave vague directions about being 5-miles west of a T-Intersection in Louisiana. The road looked familiar, but all I really remembered was that there was a mailbox on the road near where we turned, and I remembered the red dirt road and trees to get there.

We drove up onto someone else's home, figuring we would try the "small town local" approach -- asked for the Palmer Farm, but unfortunately, he didn't know that it ever existed, much less where it had been. We found a red dirt road and drove up it a little way, but it didn't really look familiar. Back on the highway, we drove back and forth, and after a bit, spotted a sign for a church. I remember my grandmother taking me to church during the summers I visited, and figured they might actually have older records, so we cut up that way...

What do you know? We were in the right spot -- I recognized the church building! Unfortunately, nobody seemed to be there, so we went for Plan B -- call my dad for better directions.

Ooh, interesting trivia -- this turned out to have been the church I was baptized at. Well, we found something from my past, anyway...

Unfortunately, it turned out that my grandmother had in fact sold the farm, and it had been developed (ish), so would no longer be recognizable, but we were in the right general area, and that dirt road had probably been the right one. So we went back and explored it in detail -- found someone pumping oil or gas or something, and a hunter's blind....and a section of road where the rut was deep enough that Brandy's car just about bottomed out -- so I ended up driving with tires in the middle and on the edge of the road for a little while -- whee!

Quest in Gray as close to complete as we could get it, we crossed the border into Louisiana and [content hidden due to not taking place in Texas, and this is Wandering Texas, not Wandering Louisiana] crossed the border back into Texas and stopped at the Travel Information Center in Waskom. Brandy was starting to feel a migraine coming on, probably from overexertion with the walk around the lake that morning, or maybe just from the heat building up. We didn't leave before loading up on brochures and travel guides for more ideas. Back on the road and heading home...

Ooh, we spot a sign for pie, and our stomachs suddenly decided that we had to pull over and get something to eat -- NOW!! (Besides, everything's better with pie!) So we turn off and pull over in Liberty City....then while we're at it, stop and get some migraine meds for Brandy. Alas, but all the cool little shops are closed, so we can't do much there....but on a whim, we decide to divert to Tyler and see the Rose Garden. As we leave, it's beginning to rain, pretty heavily too....we spot a coupld bikers (and only one bike) stranded under a bridge, and it looked like they might be having a problem, so we take the next turnoff to turn around and head back that way to see if we can offer assistance, or at least a ride to the next town.

Hm...they weren't there when we got back to the bridge they were at. We guessed that maybe they were just putting on their rain gear or something...well, rather than turning around again, we opted to take a road that wasn't even labeled in the Gazetteer -- just a thin red line that eventually met up with a road that went to Tyler.

Pulling into Tyler, we smelled BBQ, reminding us again that we were hungry (funny how easy it is to forget stuff like that). We got to the Rose Museum and found that they were closed....sorry Brandy, foiled again. Since we were there anyway, we decided to see what restaurants were available on the way out of town.

Would you believe that in Tyler, every steak and BBQ restaurant on the west side of down is either closed by 6 on Sunday, not open on Sunday, abandoned, or burned down? It's true!

Sigh....on we go, taking the back road to Canton (nope, still no food, although a gas station attendant directed us to a BBQ place that we had seen was closed on the way into town)....then to Kaufman (no luck there, either), and finally up 175 and back toward home, where we stopped and grabbed dinner at...

...Arby's. Oh well -- it was barbecue...ish. Lots of rain, lots of driving, and lots of talking, not to mention loads of fun. All-in-all, a successful adventure!

Some might look at the distances we were driving and wonder at why we would take off and spend so much money in gasoline driving that far. If all you're looking at is the price of gas when it comes to travel, then you're missing the point entirely.

A road trip is not about where you go. It's not about how far it was, or how much money you spent in gas. Road trips aren't like a trip to go see a movie. To simply go straight there and back, following the major interstate -- it takes away some of the magic of the journey. Once upon a time, people always took the back way. Those picnic areas were put all over the place because people would actually pack food, stop, cook on the provided grill, and enjoy the scenery while standing still to take it all in. There's no need to rush....find a destination that's normally only 3 hours away, and then plot a course that takes all day to get there. Stop in the small towns, go swimming, have a picnic, or just sit and breathe outside the airconditioned car for a little while.

You never know -- you might find yourself craving more road trips yourself.