Backroads and Weddings

There is a song by the Bois D’arcs called “Backroads of Texas” that celebrates, as the name implies, the backroads of Texas. I highly encourage you all to listen to this song and travel the backroads, as they really are much better than the interstate highways. This weekend, Marie and I headed down south to the land of the pines (another song reference for those of you who are familiar with OCMS) for the wedding of my long-time friend, Larry Jordan. We had a wonderful time driving first to OKC to drop off the kids with the in-laws, then to Waco for a visit with our good friends there, and finally via various backroads to Tomball were we spent two nights with our friends, Kevin and Allison and their newly born son Bryce (Brice?). The wedding was typical…there were exchanges of vows and rings, the “I do’s” and the kiss. We spent very little time with Larry, but it was nice to see him and meet his wife. We also were able to visit with his parents, brothers, sister, and nieces. The wedding was an early wedding so we were back in the hotel by 3:00 pm. We, Marie and I, Kevin, Allison, and “Baby”, and Josh and Valerie, spent the rest of the day drinking too much, eating dinner, and having semi-intellectual (with a stress on the semi) arguments about politics and God, and planned for upcoming visits. Josh and Valerie will be promising themselves to each other in May, so some future backroad traveling will be done by me and Marie in just a couple of months. Valerie has a bachelorette shower in early May, a bachelor party is planned for Josh on Labor Day weekend, and the wedding is on the 30th.
On Sunday, we had the wonderful pleasure of traveling 600 miles from Tomball to Amarillo. It ended up taking us 11 hours, with a one hour stop in Ennis for a visit with another of our Waco friends and her daughter. A large portion of this trip was on main highways, but we decided to take a backroad through North Texas on highway 180. I love roads like this. After about 30 minutes of traveling through Weatherford (a nice town) and Mineral Wells (not so nice) we finally struck out on the flat, straight road west towards Snyder, 200 miles in all at a safe and sane 80-90 mph. On this stretch of road we passed mesas, wind mills (both old water ones and new air power ones), three road runners, and an armadillo. I was staring out the windows taking in the view and the time flew by like the dead skunks on the side of the road (about 20 in all). The final stretch up I 27 got to be a bit long, but we made home by 7 and we were in bed by 10.
We had a great time and I am looking forward to my travels down south for Josh and Valerie’s wedding and parties and I will surely pick as many backroads as possible.

p.s. look for pics from our trip on Marie’s blog, I am sure there will be many.