Bowmans in Bowie

Bowmans in Bowie, Texas? Well, actually we are about 45 minutes west of Bowie but I couldn’t resist the play on the name. After our wonderful, relaxing time in Louisiana, we decided to make a long day of driving today so we could get west of Dallas, Texas. So we left Slidell early this morning and have traveled over 660 miles today.

From Slidell, we headed to the beautiful old southern city of Baton Rouge, home of LSU. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see much because we were driving in a heavy rain storm. Just above Baton Rouge, we crossed the Mississippi River (fortunately, the rain lightened). It’s much wider here than we saw in New Orleans and there were at least 8 stern-wheel riverboats docked along the banks.

As we continued our drive up through Louisiana, the terrain changed quite dramatically. Instead of the bayous and lakes of New Orleans, we saw lush green countryside reminiscent of what we had seen in Mississippi. Beautiful farms and lakes dotted the landscape and we saw egrets and lots of other birds. Other than that, this area is quite desolate as we discovered while approaching Shrevesport. With our Traverse pulling the camper, we only get 10 to 12 miles to the gallon, even on flat roads, and with the 95+ degree temperatures, of course we were also running the air conditioner. So we had to stop every 3 ½ hours (or so) for gas. When the gauge got down to ¼ of a tank, we starting looking for gas. We finally found the Cowboy Truck Stop but we were only able to purchase 99 cents of gas before they ran out. We proceeded to the next gas station, which was about 20 miles away, but they also were out of gas. I am pleased to tell you that we did make it to the next gas stop and they had plenty of gas so we were not stranded in the backwoods of Louisiana but it was a bit tense there for a while.

We pressed on in our westward journey and entered Texas anticipating the Dallas traffic. Between the heavy rain and a delay for road construction, we came into the Dallas area at 4:45 – not the timing we had wanted. The weather was cooperating and it was sunny and hot. There was a lot of traffic in places but it all moved along well and we were pleasantly surprised at how easily we were able to navigate through. Traffic that was moving in the opposite direction, however, was at a crawl. We got a good view of the city scape and the impressive road structure. At one point, there were five roads crossing over us in a crazy futuristic construction of overpasses. Looking at all of the roads and high-rise buildings we had to find out about the size of Dallas and discovered that it is the 9th largest city in the United States with a population of 1.2 million. Philadelphia, by contrast, is the 5th largest with 1.5 million.

Once clear of Dallas, we were impressed by how flat the countryside looked. You could see so far in all directions, but there wasn’t much to see – just very large ranches and an occasional house. We decided we really should look for somewhere to eat (Artis had prepared us a wonderful breakfast but that was 6:30 am and it was now about 6:00 pm). And since we were in Texas, what better meal than barbecue? We found a great little spot along the road called Leeper Creek BBQ in Decatur, TX on route 287. Jim had the quintessential Texan dinner – beef brisket and he also tried the Polish sausage. I opted for pulled pork. The list of sides contained the items I would expect with bbq but this area of the country seems to add bacon and/or jalapeno peppers to everything, so I chose the coleslaw and fries. Jim tried the potato salad which add bacon and Dijon mustard – he liked it but I did not care for it. The server brought him a sample of the jalapeno sausage which he also liked but the Polish sausage was a “hands down favorite”. We also had wonderful sweet tea, of course, and it was a charming place that we would definitely recommend.

We are spending the night in Wichita Falls RV park. We have a great spot with all the amenities right beside a small stocked lake. We are tired, glad to be out of the car, but at the same time very glad to have put so many miles behind us today. We have the rest of this week to travel to the Grand Canyon where we have reservations for Friday night. Can’t wait to see what the next few days show us.