Texas Snake

This snake was going across the road while I was house hunting in Texas. When Amy sees this she'll freak!

Avalanche is Better!

I just figured out how to post videos from my youtube account to our blog site. This is a compilation video of Jay's soccer team from this past season. Enjoy!

Starting the trip

The day that we had to say our good-byes was a really hard day. Saying good-bye to some of my best friends from school, and my best friend that I knew since I was little was really hard. But we survied that day and took the four hour trip to grandmas. Our dad has to go down to Texas for the first month of summer and live in a house down there, so he can work and find us a house to live in, while the rest of the family is at grandmas. Our grandma and grandpa live in Wyoming. We are living here untill our dad finds a house, or untill the end of the month. Our dog Hank went with our dad and he is staying at some friends of ours down in Texas. They also have a dog, so Hank will have a friend. So far everything has been going great. I just can't wait untill we can get together as a family in our own house down in Texas.

The Heat of West Texas

The tempurature went up to 107 before the day was done. Poor Hank, he just wants to go back to Utah.

Here's the video I promised of the windmills

The First Trip pt. 2

This was a looooooong day. Left Albuquerque in the morning and arrived in College Station, our new home, at 1:00 am. Glad to leave New Mexico. Not sure that I could live there. The drive took me into west Texas where I saw some new things. The wind was blowing and the tempurature reading was 107. Good thing I put Hank in the cab with me. To capture all the wind in west Texas, they've built thousands of giant windmills. Not the old kind you see in farm pictures but the new white ones with 3 bladed propellers that stand 100 feet in the air. Oil wells were pumping everywhere. No wonder they don't have state income tax in Texas. The other thing I saw were dust devils. Now these are common in the plains area of the country but the frequency of these were amazing. About every 1/2 mile a new dust devil would form from the red clay of the west Texas farmland and come whipping accross the highway. I would have to hold on as the truck would vibrate for one to two seconds and then it would pass. It was like being in a mini-tornado.

The First Trip

Well today was the first day on the road. I got off to a late start due to all the wonderful friends and neighbors that came to say goodbye. It was very heartwrenching to see your kids cry as they left friends.

Eventually I got off with our dog Hank. My wife and kids went to grandma's while I live in Texas and look for a house. My drive took me through southern Utah, western Colorado, and into New Mexico where I stopped at Albuquerque for the night.

My drive took me through several Indian reservations but the town of Shiprock caught my attention. It is in the Navajo reservation and is the sight of several books by Tony Hillerman. What struck me was the utter poverty and lack of oversight of their resources. Roads were in terrible condition, almost every sign had graffiti, and the general lack of hope was evident everywhere. I've been in poor, depressed areas before but I've never seen anything on the scale I saw today. One other item that stood out was the amount of roadside memmorials to accident victoms. Drunk Driving alert signs were everywhere and apparantly the bottle has claimed a significant number of lives in this small community. I saw more roadside flowers and crosses in this small town than I had seen in my entire life combined. It was very sad and depressing.

One fun note, Hank and I stopped at Sonic for dinner in Farmington, NM. We ate at the park benches and I found out that Hank loves onion rings. He had almost the entire batch.

Well it's off to bed and then on to College Station tomorrow.