Last week I had vacation scheduled, following some family obligations on Memorial Day. Leaving Houston first thing Tuesday didn't work out - my place was high and dry, but we still had to wait for the submerged freeway locations to dry out.
It was a long road trip from Houston to Big Bend, a long swing north to the Guadalupe Mountains at the new Mexico border and back to Houston via San Antonio.
The landscape around places like Marfa, Pecos and Ft. Stockton is normally getting dusty and brown by this time of year. On this trip, though, every plant in the whole state seemed to be healthy and green. Even the Chihuahuan desert around territory around Big Bend and Terlingua looked lush in its own way, showing what looked like a bumper crop of cactus blooms ready to sprout.
It's good to see so many places really coming out of the drought.