There are those who adjust their watches by the following formula: &uot;Spring ahead, fall back and winter in Texas.&uot; With that adage as an inspiration, my wife, The Queen B, and I headed for Texas.

We flew on a discount airline, which required all the passengers to kick the tires, chip in on the gas and elect a pilot. It was a good time to escape from Minnesota &045; it was January. It was January when we landed in the Rio Grande Valley, too. The weather in Mission, Texas must have been derived from a different calendar than the one hanging on the wall of the Batt Cave. As we exited the airport and walked outside into Texas, we discovered something that we seldom experience when outdoors in January &045; the need to take off a jacket.

We picked up our rental car from the discount rental car place. It was a nice DeSoto, in a combination of purple and pink colors that would make it easy to find in any parking lot. We drove to the Tradewinds RV Park, where we would be staying in the trailer of some good friends.

The first thing I noticed other than the temperature was that there were a lot of cars with Texas license plates. I shared this discovery with my wife, but she didn’t seem quite so excited about it as I was. Driving in Texas was an experience as driving in any state is. As everywhere today, the speed limit was just a suggestion. I did find out the hard way that there is a law in Texas that states that you have to pass the car in front of you. Fortunately, I was let go with just a warning ticket for not passing the car ahead of me, as long as I promised to never let it happen again.

We drove by schools that must have had more school buses than students. I hadn’t seen so much orange since the year the Pumpkin Patch had the fertilizer spill.

There was a lot of roadwork being done without urgency in Texas. The sun is supposed to burn out in a few billion years. That means that the road repairs in the Lone Star State will be finished in total darkness.

I visited a business called Ole Travel. Ole wasn’t in. Neither was Lena. There were Dollar General stores everywhere. Wherever there were no Dollar General stores, there were Dollar Tree or 99 Cents Plus stores. I could actually buy something in Texas with my allowance. I saw a storefront enterprise offering window tinting and notary public services. I went grocery shopping with my wife because I believe that the family who shops together, pouts together. There are large supermarkets named H.E.B. in abundance in the Rio Grande Valley. H.E.B. are the initials of the founder of the store, but I told my wife that they stood for, &uot;Have Enough Bananas?&uot; I went to a farmer’s market offering grapefruit, oranges, tangerines, peppers, beets, roasting corn, goats and sheep. We ate well in Texas. Grapefruit pie is a wonderful thing with a little Cool Whip. Food was reasonably priced, which was a good thing, as my wallet and my stomach seldom agree on anything. I fell in love with a potato-and-egg breakfast taco. I think I may have eaten chicken noodle soup featuring genuine chicken heads. I bought water for 15 cents a gallon as I was advised against drinking the local water.

The Queen B and I visited Mexico. We smuggled a few Swedes from Hartland in. We encountered a lot of pharmacies and dental offices (root canal for $100) in Mexico. We talked to a lot of Texans who considered, &uot;I tell you what,&uot; to be a complete sentence. We saw large turtles that were said to be nothing more than Texas woodticks. My wife watched for &uot;Watch for Snakes&uot; signs. We marveled at a multi-tasking Winter Texan who rode a bicycle while walking her dog on a leash, reading the newspaper and smoking a cigarette. The ubiquitous border patrol officers scurried about in an attempt to keep the smugglers of human beings at bay.

Our hosts in Texas were wonderful. The Queen B and I spent as much time as possible with friends (old and new) and relatives from Minnesota and Iowa.

Those folks made our trip. With a nation filled with wonderful people like those, I can understand why people from other lands want to get into this country.

Returning home meant trading 88-degree weather in Texas for minus 20-degree temperatures in Minnesota. My sunburn became frostbitten.

Hartland resident Al Batt writes columns for the Wednesday and Sunday editions of the Tribune.