Texas and Turtles

We made it to Texas yesterday.  It was a long drive because the cross-winds were really stiff and there were a lot of trucks on I-10.  Sarah kept me company by playing Neon Moon and other songs on her guitar - we had fun trying to translate the sheet music into playable guitar music.

The RV is tired after pushing to get to Texas

I had to stop every couple of hours (or less) to rest.  As had become customary, we planned to stop at the rest-stop welcome center inside the border.  It was a great little place - more than the typical cinder block building with free maps, restrooms, and caged-in vending machines.  This center was built on the side of a hill near a swamp, and featured a really beautiful hammock trail over the tidal swamp.

A nice gal in the visitor center gave us some really good information about things to do in Texas.  It turns out there are some really neat caves here in Texas, all pretty much on our current approximate route out west.  I was pretty excited about getting to see some real caves - I'm originally from Indiana and we have some really spectacular caves such as Blue Springs Caverns or Wyandotte Cave.  Florida Caverns State Park isn't really all that great - nice for Florida I guess but a bit too well traveled to really provide a unique cave experience.  One of our potential destinations on this trip is Carlsbad Caverns where we hope to do some real adventure caving - we took a longer tour last time and it was awesome.

We had a really good laugh on the hammock trail.  Sarah was thoroughly enjoying pointing out all the turtles in the swamp.  (She just got a new turtle book to identify all sorts of turtles and is excited about identifying all of them she runs across - I take pictures on deco while cave diving for her to identify now)  I asked her to point out a turtle in the swamp so I could take a picture of her.  Unfortunately I didn't really get the picture I wanted, so I asked her to pose again (in the same cheesy way).

Where's that turtle again?

Shy Sarah

This time, there was another guy walking down the trail.  Sarah was really shy and kind of half-pointed to the turtle.  (See picture)  I took the picture, trying not to laugh and shake the camera.  After the guy passed, we laughed about how silly it was for her to be shy about that.  It was a good time.