I learned that the urban sprawl of Houston is HUGE. We sat in traffic in town after town, never getting any closer to Houston than Sugar Land which is a good 30 miles away. Finally, as we pulled through the last stop sign in Rosenberg, it all instantly disappeared as if by magic. Suddenly, there we were, in the land of cotton and cattle ranches.
In cotton's defense, we were riding through cotton fields already going down through Mississippi. Here, we were kicking up tufts alongside the road, blown out from the fields. It was a long, flat haul across ALT US-90, and a good chunk of it was 2-lane. Truckers here are doing 70, and even that seems a bit pokey given the circumstances. We eventually figured out when you catch them, they see you and hold their speed and line. When the coast is clear, they drift off to the shoulder, your signal to go on and get around them. Teamwork. I like it.
This part of Texas is pretty interesting; along with every Lazy J, Rocking B, Double R ranch in the world (we saw our first longhorn cattle!) we came across oil rigs and even orchards. The wester we got, the hillier it got, around the hometown of Shiner Beer in, uh, Shiner. From Gonzales, it was a straight shot through China Grove into San Antonio, where we were booked in at the Fairfield a few blocks from the Alamo and Riverwalk.
We got in early enough to do laundry (window for us is somewhere between Day 6 and Day 10) and get our tourist picture on the way to the Riverwalk, which is pretty damned cool. I had never been to San Antonio, and I was amazed by the hidden city below street level, which for the life of me I cannot understand - especially given the situation faced by Houston *above* ground level. Whatever.
Dallas is a 4.5 hour shot straight up I-35 in the morning.
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