Still in Texas, Beaumont Tx

Since we left San Diego, I've been mentioning the lack of hills to climb that are proportional to the mountains were are crossing.  In California, we really didn't have any hills to speak of, but we did cross huge mountain ranges.  In New Mexico, we had a few big hills, but once again, not really in proportion to the mountain ranges that we crossed.  The next picture is looking back on the route we just drove and you get an idea of the flat terrain sprinkled with mountain peaks.  Note the road is ridiculously straight, and the hill, very gradual.

By early morning, we reached the flat-topped mountains.  They were all absolutely flat-topped at the same level, as if someone had taken a huge machete and lopped their tops off.  It was amazing, there were no exceptions!  The flat-tops appeared suddenly and ended up being everywhere.  The next picture shows the beginning of these mountains and also give you an idea of the rough weather that seemed to be waiting for us.

The shies got even more threatening but not a single drop fell our way!  It just got sunnier and warmer as the day progressed.

One fantastic sight along the way were the mountain-top mesas [flat top] just covered with windmills.  This lasted for a few miles and was quite stunning when you consider that the windmills are white against a very dark and foreboding sky.  Sorry, no pictures.

The other interesting thing about today was the incessant wind; it was from the South West and pushed us around most of the day.  Campers and RVs had a much rougher time of it! There were even a few tumbleweeds hopping across the highway.  One just exploded as we drove over it at 80 mph.  There's not much you can do when you see one hopping across your path.  Ours was a good three feet high and just exploded into a gazillion shards of dry stubble as we drove into it.  I've always been afraid of one of these dry weeds getting stuck under the car and being dragged along, just to burst into flame from the road-rash.  Maybe next time... 

Joan drove through the center of Houston on the Interstate 10 and we ended the day in Beaumont, just shy of the Louisiana border.  We're at the Quality Inn, just next door to the Carrabba's Italian Grill.  We checked-in then went across the parking lot to the restaurant where the line up was impressive.  We gave our name and were given a number and an estimate of a one hour wait...  We returned to our room and did the Internet thing then tried calling the restaurant to see how the wait list was progressing. We were #53.  We couldn't get through on the phone so we walked over, fifteen minutes early.  We checked with the maitre-d' and were told that they were at #45 so it might be another half hour.  At this point, another lady asked how many were in our party.  She offered two seats at the bar overlooking the kitchen; we accepted.  What fun!  The linear kitchen was staffed by 8 people, all in near-panic mode.  They were divided into different groups, each served by a small printer [Epson] that printed out their portion of the meal order.  We sat directly in front of the salad and pizza stations.  They pushed out a lot of salad as we ate and even did a few pizzas in the wood fired oven.  All in all, it was very entertaining, plus, the meal we had was truly excellent.  It's going to be much easier to get Joan into a Italian restaurant in future!  Great!