On Saturday, I made an unplanned trip to Hallettsville to visit a cousin who has fallen upon some hard times. Hallettsville is only about 1.5 hours away from my house, almost all but a mile of it traveled on the same highway. I-90 is road I travel quite often to get from point A to point B in my neighborhood, and I never gave any consideration to how far it might stretch across the state and what all I might find if I ever took it out of town. Not being the adventurous sort, it’s probably not something I ever would have done without a reason, but I noticed pretty early into the trip that there were a lot of little interesting stops that could be made along the way – only I hadn’t brought my camera as I didn’t think it appropriate at the time (turned out my aunt and cousin both asked me why I didn’t bring it, so I guess I could have and it would have been fine).

Anyway, I did have my iPhone with me of course, but I didn’t want to slow the trip down by taking pictures, so I decided to film video of the journey instead, both to remind me of places I’d like to get back to later with a camera in hand, as well as entertain myself while driving. I ended up with about 20 minutes of footage, but knowing I could never subject people to that much shaky iPhone video taken through a bug-splattered windshield, I narrowed it down to four minutes and added a pretty song to make it more entertaining. I worked on this video for hours Sunday when I got home, so please – ENJOY, dammit! It’s only four minutes! And if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to drive across Texas, here you go (even though really this is only 1.5 hours of driving across it. Still).

I also took photos with my phone once I got to Hallettsville; here’s a few I’ve had time to process.

Hallettsville courthouse – also taken with the iPhone through a car window and edited with Snapseed on my phone. Not bad huh?

One of my cousin’s dogs had puppies, and this is the only one they have left to give away. He’s adorable, but already spoken for, and he’s going to get big so I couldn’t have taken him anyway.