pring is slow to hit Texas. Only a few patches of bluebonnets can be found on the highways that lead out of Dallas. It's cold. It's cold, and it's April.

I drive southwest, toward San Angelo -- tractor country, land of the deer and steer, where a woman in a convenience store once told me, "Honey you best drive slow, cause if one of them things gets in front of your car, you can kiss your car goodbye."

Yes, yes, I assured her, that's how they get the phrase 'like a deer caught in headlights.'

"Oh right, you think I'm exaggerating," she said. "Well, the last guy I told that to came back four hours later with his grill completely wrecked. And he had a truck." She says truck like some people say "Harvard."

I like driving into West Texas. I like passing places like Dub's BBQ and Miss Kitty's Steakhouse, cities like Rainbow and Dublin. I like the bare trees and the gray and stubbly cliffs, the low-slung telephone wires that stretch into the distance. What are those things that look like windmills but aren't windmills? They're all over.

"Gob Less America," reads a marquee right outside the city.

Tomorrow I head to the Davis Mountains, to see the mysterious Marfa lights and Friday, to the McDonald Observatory. Don't expect any updates till this weekend. I'm disconnected till then.