We decided to move south the day I was stranded in a field in the middle of nowhere in my first blizzard. That was 32 years ago.
The last time we were in Dallas there was a Coup D’état in the country we were living in. For those of you who don’t know the term (I wish I didn’t) - a coup d’état means that factions of the army try to take over the country and establish a military dictatorship - Cuba, in other words.
So when day 3 of the CENT tour began with - don’t let the weathermen fool you - it was a blizzard not a ‘snow storm’ - us driving through a blizzard to get to just outside of Dallas, TX, the superstitious bent in me started ringing like alarms at a nuclear site.
Turns out it wasn’t as bad as we expected. We had a couple of hours of driving with bad conditions like this:
But we eventually reached Tyler, which is a sprawling southern city with not a lot of charm and a ton of snow, which they don’t ever get. The electricity was out everywhere and we arrived, after 7 hours of driving, around 6:30 p.m. starving and a tad on the cranky side.
Did I mention we have bets about whether we’ll still be speaking to each other after 30 days on the road?
The hotel was overrun with locals who had no power checking in to stay warm, and there was an hour wait at any restaurant we found. Luckily, I spotted a little fish place with a sign saying - The Crawfish Are In.
Aaaah, nothing switches a cranky mood to ecstatic like hot gumbo, steamed nitro-spicy crawfish, and a couple of local brews. We ate like pigs, came back happy and warm and full, and topped the night off by watching the start of the Winter Olympics.
We lived in Vancouver for a couple of years and felt very proud of that grand opening.
Today, we’re off to Amarillo, Texas.
Too bad Vancouver’s not getting the snow we are in the south!
Cheers,
JC