Starting just south of El Paso, Texas, today will see us on the road well into the evening. The other side of Texas alone is 775 miles (1,255 km) from where we are now, and our destination, at a minimum, is Shreveport, Louisiana.

As Caroline and I have already driven Interstate 10 across Texas back when we were returning to Phoenix on our year 2000 road trip, we are taking Interstate 20 east to scout this part of Texas that will take us near Pecos, Odessa, Abilene, Dallas, and Longview.

On a pit stop near Sweetwater, Texas, we are awestruck by a formation of five B-1 stealth bombers flying in from the north and heading to some nearby Air Force base.

Oil, bombers, and wide-open ranch land have us thinking about how much we are in President Bush’s corner of the woods. We stopped to stretch our legs again, this time just up the road (as measured in Texas miles) from Crawford, Texas, where the President’s ranch is located.

Eastern Texas is lush and green, a beautiful place really, and with cattle out here, I’m starting to feel we’ve seen the soul of the Lone Star state today. It will be 8:00 p.m. before we cross into Louisiana, and with everyone still energized, we push forward, passing Shreveport on our way to Alexandria. The day ends late, but not as late as the night before. We have driven about 925 miles (1,500 km) today or the equivalent of driving from Berlin, Germany, to Rome, Italy. Finally, we are in a position to start the core of our trip into the Southeastern United States.