November 27

A grey day, but warm. A bit of rain off and on, not enough to get me wet, until I got to my destination, Coldspring, where it started to pour when I got to the city limit. Coldspring is the San Jacinto county seat, and the courthouse is by far the biggest building, by an order of magnitude, in town. It is Greco-Roman revival, in sandstone, and everything around it is frontier style, festooned with white Christmas lights. Antique shops, hair dressers, one interesting-looking restaurant, real estate and insurance offices: about three blocks worth. The San Jacinto Inn (I'm not going to help you with the pronunciation, but there is the right way and the Texas way) is a clean $40 a day place run by east Indians. A couple of jerks, canine and human, on the road today, and a simpatico older fellow in the parking lot of a supermarket who worked in the oil fields, here and in Canada. The bad news of the day is that it's going to continue to rain and get much colder; the good news is that tomorrow I will be far enough west of Houston to turn south. It's a four hour drive in the old guy's truck (he's maybe seventy) to Corpus Christi, which should be a six day ride.