Heading North to Gun Barrel City

Monday morning we were up and hit the road at 7 am.  We turned off Highway 7 unto 36 and throughout the day we changed from one highway to another as the highways are constantly changing   numbers here.
We crossed over the Colorado River at 9 am. Beautiful countryside. Lots of lush ranch land, with several  different breeds of cattle being raised and cross-bred: Charolais, Longhorn, Angus and some Brahmas.   Everything  was so green and picture book pretty. This area had no farmland at all.
I could definitely live in an area like this.

Pasture land north of Belleville

There were some  very fancy gates to some of the ranches.

  

 There seemed to be plenty of water here so they are definitely not suffering from the drought they are having in the Rio Grande Valley.

Along much of the highways we kept seeing the most  beautiful blue flowers.


We found out later that these flowers are called Blue Bonnets and they actually have Blue Bonnet Festivals in some areas.

These trees are called Red Bud trees and their flowers are a brilliant purple. They flower before they get leaves.








It was a wonderful day of travelling and although we took a couple wrong turns due to  the navigator (that would be me) making a couple minor errors, we managed to right ourselves quickly enough.
 The most difficult part of the day was when we arrived at Gun Barrel City and tried to find James and Renee's place. It didn't help any that when we crossed the lake I completely lost my sense of direction. However, after  asking some local people we managed to find their place by about 6:30 pm.   We were both very happy to have finally arrived.

Keep warm.