CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS

May 10/10

Crystal City, the Spinach Capital of the World was a definite disappointment. Other than seeing a small Del Monte processing plant at one the end of the town and the statue of Popeye on the rutted, empty building main street, there was no sign of any spinach fields, products or farm workers. However, Popeye stood proudly on his spinach can and Stuart kept singing 3 or 4 different versions of, "I’m Popeye the Sailor Man….” over and over again:

We left Crystal City in the clouds and rain on May 9 and drove north on US 83 to San Angelo, Texas. It was an interesting drive through hills and lush green vegetation to sparsely vegetated rangelands and into grain fields at our destination.

We are staying in the San Angelo State Park which is a few miles out of town and have a view of the OC Fisher Lake. It had a lot more water many years ago.

This is a nice respite from the private RV parks as there is plenty of space at the sites and the neighbouring sites are not close at all. The services include 50 amp electric and water hook-ups at the site and a dump station for the sewer. Very peaceful although it has been windy for the last 24 hours and it is hot (98F) again.

We’ve noticed that drive-thru services are really big in this part of the US. Some banks are completely drive-thru with no inside staff or services and there are beverage and snack drive-thrus in most towns also.

This is a motor bank (drive-thru) that looks sort of like a highway toll booth area:

And this is a “Party Barn” cold beverage and snack drive-thru:

Everyone here has the Texas drawl and they greet you with “How y’all doin’?” They don’t expect an answer but we are conditioned to reply “Fine and how are you?” It gets us a few strange looks. We haven’t seen more than a couple of vehicles from other states in the past few weeks—seems like no one else is visiting Texas.

Texans are generally courteous drivers and most of them obey the speed limit which is usually 65 or 70 mph even on the secondary roads. They have signs on the road encouraging people to drive friendly – the Texas way. There is police presence on the highways (including some photo radar) so the speed limit is enforced. Hey, maybe that could work on the freeway in the Lower Mainland of BC!! It sure makes for a safer and easier drive, as everyone is travelling at the same speed.