This trip served four purposes:

• Photograph four more state capitol buildings -- #34 Texas, #35 Louisiana, #36 Mississippi and #37 Arkansas towards my goal of photographing all 50
• Visit home/museum of four U.S. Presidents -- towards my goal of visiting them all -- Lyndon Johnson, both Bush's and Clinton. That now makes 24 of 42 Presidents visited.
• Visit a brother, a friend, several major universities and a national battlefield (which I had visited before).

TEXAS: Beginning in 1977, I have been to Texas five times. Covered most of the western part of the state and the panhandle a couple of times. Never been to any of the cities on the southern border of the state between Galveston and El Paso. So this trip was not expecting much new except for finally seeing Austin. Also, in Texas along I-30 I cared little for their highway onramps. They are flat and very short. Vehicles are on the outer road then they can, in a very short distance, pop onto the interstate. So that meant that I constantly had to watch the traffic on the outer roads in case they all of a sudden pull in front of me.

LOUISIANA: Just a quick repeat visit to Baton Rouge, this time to photograph the state capitol building. Except for extreme northeastern Louisiana, this state is unappealing to me. It just feels wrong (and I cannot explain that!). I had forgotten how lush the state is. Plenty of water everywhere.

MISSISSIPPI: Just a quick repeat visit to Jackson, this time to photograph the state capitol building and see nearby Vicksburg Battlefield for the second time. The surrounding city seems nice. I have been to Shilo battlefield a few times and will be at Gettysburg this fall for the first time. Sobering feeling when one thinks about what took place there while standing on the same grounds.

ARKANSAS: Just a quick visit to Little Rock, this time to photograph the state capitol building. I lived in Fort Smith at age 3. First time to visit the southeastern part of the state.

MISSED VISITING:
--President George H.W. Bush's library in College Station TX. I was there and drove through the adjacent campus of Texas A&M University. But the police had barricaded the entrances to the library. Maybe my timing was just bad. So all I could do was photograph the entrance sign.
--My friend in Houston. She ended up needing to go see her mother during the time I was in town. We planned to get together the following weekend when she was in my home town area.

OBSERVATIONS: Some observations made while traveling in this area:

• Texas was blooming in orange everywhere, two varieties. One was the wildflower Indian Paintbrush along the highways. Two was the orange cones that covered most of the highway between Fort Worth and Austin. Several other highways had this variety of orange.
• I am used to seeing signs along the highways warning of a school just ahead. Texas does the same thing for churches.
• The colors of wildflowers along the highways in the different states. Texas was mostly orange with some blue. Louisiana was pink plus had clover. Mississippi was white.
• he lush plant life in Baton Rouge smelled really good. That instantly brought back childhood memories of growing up in Tennessee.
• Two pretty driving sections along the way Sunday. I-55 north out of Hammond LA and Highway 80 between Vicksburg MS and Tallulah LA. The former was only the highway cut out from a solid mass of very tall trees. The latter ran along a tree-lined railroad track on one side and farm fields on the other side.
• There was a 20-mile stretch of I-10 west of Baton Rouge that was nothing but the highway across marshland. No exits. No pulling off.

The Bests:

1. Getting to visit my brother at his new home
2. Getting four more state capitols photographed and four more U.S. Presidents visited
3. Vicksburg, even though I had seen it a few decades ago but had forgotten much about it
4. The subdivision adjacent to the SMU campus in Dallas. Gorgeous!

The Worsts:

1. Cloudy most of the time I was here thus photographs do no come out looking as good as they could. And on my last day, it rained almost all day across Arkansas and northern Texas.
2. My camera was acting up in a couple of ways. One, the zoom lens would get stuck halfway out. Two, it somehow shifted to a mode of very non-pixelated images, thus, not much clarity or color in the images taken on a cloudy day. And the photographs are THE MAIN reason I am taking these trips of late.
3. The interstate highway surfaces in western Louisiana and near Jackson MS. They were bone-rattling bad.

The Totals:

• Miles Driven: 1514
• Driving: 24 hours
• States: 4 -- Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas
• U.S. Presidential Homes/Museums: 4 (Lyndon Johnson, both Bush's and Clinton)
• National Park: 1 -- Vicksburg (a repeat)
• Universities: 7 -- TCU, Baylor, Univ. of TX, Texas A&M, SMU, Rice, LSU
• Pictures Taken: 183 (and deleted 33 of them)