Memphis, Texas

I'm still "on the road"...making the journey from Utah to Austin, Texas.  We've passed through southeastern Utah, and passed through Colorado.  We stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico for an overnight stay...before making the trek through western Texas.

While in Albuquerque, we had an amazing treat.  For breakfast, we had donuts from a place called Rebel Donuts

These are some of the most creative donuts I've ever seen.  Check out these amazing donuts.  In the top-right corner of the box below, you'll see the maple bars with slices of bacon:

In the box below, you'll find a donut topped with Pop Rocks (the blue one).  Right below that, is a chocolate donut with peanut butter:

Needless to say, this was a really fun place to get donuts.  We'll have to remember this, the next time we're in New Mexico!

We spent several hours driving along Interstate 40, which ran in parallel with Route 66 for quite a distance.  The amazing thing was passing through so many tiny little towns in Texas.  You saw dozens of towns that had nothing but a Dairy Queen and a high school.  It felt like the entire town was focused on the local football team.  I don't even know how some of the towns had enough kids to field an entire team ; )  One example of this was a town called Memphis, Texas:

The downtown area was...deserted.  It looked like most of the businesses were closed, or had disappeared long ago.  I can imagine that back in the 1950s or 1960s that this was a thriving farming community.  Now, it's almost a ghost town:

We saw a lot of this kind of town along the way.  I'm glad we living in a thriving city, that still has a great deal of character.

We stopped in Dallas, so we could visit with my oldest son.  We were actually planning to drive straight through to Austin.  However, we asked G-Man about taking yet another day to drive...or heading straight home.  He told us that he wanted to take an extra day...so that he could see his brother. I won't lie - there was a little tear in my eye when a 5 year-old demonstrated to me just how important his family is to him.  They had a really fun time together:

Our last leg of the trip is familiar to us, as we've driven from Dallas to Austin several times.  We wanted  to make it interesting, so we stopped at a fun location for the first time.  It's called Collin Street Bakery, and it's situated just north of Waco, Texas.  They specialize in cookies, pies and fruitcake.  No, seriously.  The place was pretty cool:

Fruit pies are a personal favorite...

We were only about 30 minutes from the house when a rock flew up from the road and struck the windshield.  Moments later, the windshield started to crack...so now we have to replace the whole thing:

At least it happened close to home ; )

Overall...an amazing, but tiring, trip.  We were able to see a host of new places, landscapes and roads.  I'm not ready to jump in the car again, for a while, but I appreciated being with my family for several days in a row ; )  Thanks for reading!