What a wild weekend. We took off early Friday morning, with Jacob's girlfriend stuffed in the back seat, and drove 13 hours to San Angelo, Texas. Jacob's schooling is there at Goodfellow Air Force Base, and we needed to be there in time to sign him out for the weekend. Thankfully, he had his barracks clean, and had not gotten in trouble, so he was able to leave. I would have been angry if he had not been able to.

When I think of Texas, I think of lush green wheat fields, longhorns and big cities. Nope, not this part of Texas. It's hot, it's dry and it's sandy. Everything is short: th...