It'll do pig, it'll do

Oh I forgot my most memorable part of our trip to the mountains for hiking. We weren’t even out of Texas yet, but I really don’t consider the panhandle Texas, it might as well be annexed by Oklahoma into that wasteland of non-scenic routes. But then of course Texas would loose our bragging rights for being the biggest state. Now I know you think I failed geography and don’t realize that Alaska is a bigger state, but in my reality we are talking about biggest real states. Alaska is really just our own little part of Canada we conquered and rose up our flag on. How many people actually live there anyways? Wait I’ll check on my trust google. I love google, google is my best friend. It lets me know all the information I want, it is excited that I want to learn all this useless knowledge, it feeds my knowledge addiction, and it doesn’t talk back when I yell at it for not giving me the information I want in the order I want it. Ok hold on I’m off to google. I’m back. Ok as of the 2000 census the total population of Alaska is 626,932, ok the estimate for 2003 (since we want reliable and recent stats) is 648,818. That’s it folks. The total population of Dallas, Texas is 1,188,580 in the 2000 census. That is almost twice the population of the 2003 estimate. People Dallas has more people than Alaska. Thus my reality is not only plausible but in fact correct.

Now that you have been edumacated about Alaska, Texas and the biggest state war I will continue with my story.

So we are in small town Texas in the panhandle and we pull into a gas station and what do my eyes behold but the perfect photo opportunity. There right in front of me was a motel. But not just any motel, it was the “It’ll Do Motel”. Now that is some cracker jack marketing there. Sometimes you want a luxury motel, sometimes you want a convenient motel, and some times you want a cheap motel, but let’s admit it people there are those moments when we just want a motel that will do.

I loved this motel, I wanted to buy this motel, or at least take a picture of this motel. So I stumbled out of the van (we left at like 10 p.m. and had been on the road for a while now so it was fairly late and I think I had dozed off at some point). So I stumble out with my camera trying to get just the right framing of the motel and what comes my way but a police officer in his nice shiny squad car. Try explaining to a police man why you are stumbling out of an 18 passenger van in the middle of the night in the middle of the panhandle in front of a sketchy gas station and trying to take a picture in the pitch blackness of a motel sign. Somehow I pulled it off and got my picture and if I had a scanner or a digital camera I would post it but just picture in your mind: west Texas, small town, run down gas station, sketchy looking motel and a sign on the side of it that says “It’ll Do Motel”.