Roadtrip: Texas to Maine

We are sick of stifling 105 degree heat in Texas so our Traveler Blue’s van is headed north to Maine.  How do you get from Texas to Maine?  One little town at a time.  I moved a bunch of my stuff from the shack in Austin to the rental house in Houston in preparation for the Austin demolition and have been enjoying The Woodlands pampered lifestyle, massages & mani/pedi’s with my girls, Pentatonix concert, hanging out with my sister-in-law and Douglas’ nieces, and babysitting ‘B’.

Douglas has been prepping the van for our next adventure and doing flips on mountain bikes.

‘He was born in Nacogdoches

That’s in East Texas

Not far from the border

But he liked to tell everybody

He was from Lake Charles’ – Lucinda Williams

It felt great to be traveling the backroads of TX and our first stop claimed to be the oldest town in Texas, Nacogdoches.  The area indicates that it had some sort of settlement 10k years ago and was the primary village of the Caddo Indians.  There is an old town square and Stephen F. Austin University and that is about all we saw.

Our next stop was Carthage Texas and the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame & The Tex Ritter Museum  which honors those who have made outstanding contributions to country music and were born in the state of Texas.  My favorite display was the section on Nudie rodeo western design wear. Nuta Kotlyarenko, known professionally as Nudie Cohn, was an American tailor who designed decorative rhinestone-covered suits, known popularly as “Nudie Suits”.

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Oil was discovered in El Dorado in the 1920’s and it made a lot of folks instant millionaires which is why there are so many brick buildings.  My grandparents moved here to be a part of this action and my grandfather worked in the oil fields of Smackover during the day and ran a bar in the evenings. 

Yep, my Dad was born here and it is now the hippest little town in the south.:-) We had a quick workout and shower at the gym and woke up boondocked at Wally World.  How did that happen?  I guess we were too tired to drive 20 min. to the nearest state park. We are always amazed at the number of people shopping at Walmart in the middle of the night.