DAY 4 MON. MAR. 21 MESQUITE TX.- AUSTIN,TX.

Texas is huge ... and sometimes a little confusing. Mesquite is a sprawling suburb of malls, freeways, restaurants and overpasses. We got lost. Twice. Last night, trying to find a place to eat, and this morning, trying to get out. Lou displayed her navigational skills by putting us on the right routes, and, in a phrase, we lived to drive another day.

Did I mention that Texas was huge? Our drive out of Dallas through to Waco put us through some of the most wide open prairie we'd ever seen, and we've driven through Manitoba and Saskatchewan ! It's endless here. There are plenty of trees and windbreaks, but they're miles away out to the horizon. The sky is huge, too, and we're sure that storms and tornados here are impressive and terrifying. Waco featured Baylor University, which looked modern and ancient at the same time.

Politics is big here, too. The stretch from Dallas to Waco is in red-neck bible country. Two large billboards caught our eye. One featured a large picture of former President George W. Bush and the caption read "Miss Me Yet?" and railed against broken promises and false hope. The other billboard had an unflattering photo of President Obama and a caption that read "Socialist By Conduct!" Holy crap, I thought politics in Canada was cut-throat !!

We landed in our hotel in Austin around noon, and after a celebratory beer, decided to go outside and explore. It was a hot and sunny afternoon, and our hotel host told us the walk downtown would be about a half hour. It was, in fact, close to an hour and a half in the hot sun. We were not impressed with that!

Austin is, to say the least, impressive. We walked around the perimeter of the University of Texas, past two huge stadiums, one for football and the other for track/soccer, and then down to the state government complex, bigger than most countries' national governments. From there, we went to one of the several entertainment districts: note the plural here !! We enjoyed drinks at an Irish pub and engaged in pleasant conversations with some friendly Texans. We learned a lot about them and their state, and tried to tell them what we could about Canada, a land they'd heard of , but, aside from a visit to Banff by one of them, a place none of them knew much about. We felt like we were the first arrivals from another planet; "take me to your leader !" The day rounded off with a delicious Tex-Mex dinner and a cab ride to the hotel.

We have 3 days in Austin, and we plan to make the most of them. Yeeeeeehaaaawwwww !!