East Texas

Having said goodbye to the Farrants a second and final time (!), we pointed the car eastwards. Navigating the Interstate was a pain. When it isn't jammed up during Austin's rush hours (most of the bloody day!) it's chock full of racing cars and trucks all trying out out-man the other in a display of testosterone that would put a colony of alpha-male gorillas to shame. Nerves thoroughly jangled we headed north east on a continual stream of single-laned roadworks. For the next 36 hours my Sat-Nag directed us through:

• Bryan, an old school Texan town where we stopped for a coffee. Despite being billed an Italian Cafe, it wasn't up to producing a Cappachino.
• Crockett, a town so empty and boring that it isn't even mentioned in the LP guide book.
• The Davy Crockett National Forest (loads of trees, and then more trees).
• Nacogdoches (I'm advised that it's pronounced nack-uh-doe-chuss but we referred to it as "Dodgy Nachos"). I'm informed that is the oldest town in Texas. Certainly the most joyless. Nary a bar or restaurant in sight of the Main Street so we camped at the usual collection of motels outside the city limits. The girl who checked us in for the night was amused by our English accents asking, "What the hell are y'all doing way out here?" Quite! Evening saw us with some margaritas, litre glasses of a rather good local draught beer called Modelo, and burgers 'n wings at the Quality Inn's very own bar n' grill.
• Driving south the next day we reached the Big Thicket National Park, a place that boasted "one of Texas' most interesting ecosystems: coastal plains meet desert and dunes, and cypress swamps stand next to pine and hardwood forests." We duly went to the ranger station where some good 'ol boys were being lectured on what they could or could not shoot while they were there (my god, can there be anything not human left alive in this State?). Having received a map and directions we realised that not only the car but the entire ranger station was covered in giant insects. Stuff the cypress swamps, we thought, as we tried to get back into our car. At the next garage I filled the car up while Linda manfully tried to scrape the film of dead insects off the windscreen and lights.
• Having failed that objective, we made our way south through a large industrial town called Beaumont over a network of flyovers and underpasses. Our objective for the night was . . .
• Port Arthur. I figured to stop here for the night but Google maps was informing us that the accommodation situation was going to be similar to Dodgy Nachos -- a cluster of motels situated on the main road into the port town. We drove past them into a fairly desolate inner town before crawling over an impressively high steel bridge to the sandbanked section of the port. There, the surrounding swamp and port activity gave way to a complex of children's play castles and rich peoples' waterside summer homes, complete with private garage for their speedboats.
• Onward, then. Since it was to be no fun to stay there we decided to make another 70-odd mile journey along dreaded Interstate roads, sudden slip road exits, scary junctions and enormous causeways over acres of swampland to the island city of Galveston.