Cruising

Last night, The Texan and I decided to take advantage of the late daylight hours to go on a drive through Hill Country after work and take some pictures. Specifically, he had a new camera toy he wanted to try out. It's something delightfully called a "panosaurus," which is an AWESOME name for a contraption that you put on your tripod to hold your camera steady so you can take a decent panoramic picture. Seriously, isn't that the best name ever? Whenever I speak of it to him - and I absolutely find reasons to bring it up often - I always use the big announcer voice: "PANNN-NO-SAURRR-USSSS." Try it, it's fun.

Oh, and it apparently works too. He got some decent pictures, he thinks.

As for me, I was responsible for navigating. I did some research and found out that FM 337 is supposed to be one of the most scenic drives in this neck of the woods, so off we went. We drove it to Lost Maples State Park. 337 was quite lovely... and completely deserted. We pulled over once to take pictures and it's kind of spooky how loud the countryside can be. Sure, there aren't any sirens or car radios blaring, but man can those bugs make a lot of noise.

We did indeed see maples at Lost Maples, and they apparently change colors in the fall. Who needs to go to New England? I'm sure these are just as nice. Right.

One of my favorite things about these drives is that you can still see a lot of rural America. We passed through several little towns that were nothing more than a post office.

We also drove through quite a lot of water. We've been inundated with rains this spring - it's almost like we've got our own personal monsoon season - and in fact I was pretty excited to drive through D'Hennis, which made the Los Angeles Times last weekend as they had a picture of people walking through flooded streets. There's not a whole lot there - it's not until you get to Hondo where you are in a town that has a Dairy Queen and Dollar General and that you know you've hit the bright lights/big city life again.