Day 3 – Monday

I had been looking forward to seeing Colorado, since I had never been there and I've heard it's the most beautiful country. When we got up we ate breakfast at a Mimi's Cafe that we had driven past the night before, and I did enjoy seeing the mountains in the distance. But we were headed east, and east Colorado is as flat and brown as everything else we'd seen in the last 2 days. It was quite a disappointment.

Colorado became Kansas which became Oklahoma, and I was glad we were driving in the dark, because I could tell it was just one more flat brown ugly boring state. Our plan was to get to Texas to my sister's house no matter how late it was. She and David insisted it was ok for us to get in late, and we needed to get up early to get our marriage license since we weren't sure how long it would take. I'd had to get a duplicate birth certificate for myself a couple years ago, and I remember it took a couple of hours of standing in lines. For the marriage license, we could not get it later than Wednesday, because Texas has a 3-day waiting period. So we preferred to get it on Tuesday, just in case there was a problem with our identification or something, we'd still have a day to resolve it. And I had a wedding-related appointment on Tuesday afternoon, therefore we had to get the license Tuesday morning.

We considered staying at a hotel just past the Texas state line, since we could get the license anywhere in Texas, but Carrollton is actually in north Texas and not far from the state line, so we pushed on. By the time we got there, I was starving. So, it made me really happy to see that Shannon and the kids had set out a snack tray in our room with a nice welcome note. They were mind-readers!