25 - 26 October 2019
It was originally going to be a bit of an experiment for me to drive by myself from Wichita to Las Cruces, considering we had only driven cross country together for the first time a couple years ago. But now I had already driven farther getting to Wichita, so no problem.
In the morning I packed up the she shed, then had a quick snack at McDs, picking up some coffee and iced tea for the road. I filled up the car with gas, and for the first time ever, without stopping ran out the tank until the needle was below the top of the E line, almost to Amarillo. I guess after nine days I was ready to get out of Wichita and a little time alone was welcome.
My route was a little off the beaten path but turned out to still be mostly four lane divided, with isolated stretches of two lane with no shoulders. In about the third ring of progressively smaller suburbs around Wichita, in I think Kingman, there was a Carnegie library right off the highway, so well cared for it looked new, and still the town library. Farther down the highway at an isolated curve it looked like a thundering herd of trash pandas had crossed the highway, because several didn't make it.
I passed the world's largest hand dug well. I didn't know that was a thing, either. Somewhere along the way there was some sort of windmill museum, with at least a couple dozen or so on display outside, most of them working.
I passed the Daltons gang hideout, famous in the late 1800s for robbing banks and trains. Imagine your town is so remote that being a hideout for a gang of killers is the claim to fame. As I was leaving Greensburg, in my rear view mirror I caught a couple of foxes running across the road just behind me.
As I approached OK I starting seeing chunks of ice and snow melting on the road, which was otherwise dry. As I got into OK there was patchy snow, and then into TX there were only patchy bare areas with several inches of snow, drifts in a couple spots, with some major (comparatively) intersections clearly plowed. Nonetheless the roads were dry or at most a little wet in spots.
In Borger TX, an hour outside Amarillo, I finally had to stop and get more gas and coffee, and drop off my prior drinks. Trump wear was clearly still in fashion with the locals. I picked up dinner at Blue Sky, a burger place in Amarillo. They have green chile! I swear I didn't see the bumper sticker in the background of the exploded burger diagram until about the dozenth time I looked at it.
After checking into a hotel down the block I ran out the cable TV, cycling though the channels until I was sick of it, falling asleep early and mostly staying asleep until 5a. Nice.
In the morning it was Ben's Donuts. They had koloches! I had to get a sampling of their other wares in order to avoid being rude. This included "fill on demand" donuts, which I had filled with raspberry jam.
There was just a series of sad cowtowns after leaving Amarillo. I consoled myself after each with a donut. There were herds of boing-boing deer on both sides of Roswell (pronghorn?). I tried to stop at a McDonalds in Roswell, but not the flying saucer one. Google maps had some trouble distinguishing between a McDonalds inside a Walmart and the adjacent McDonalds and we had a bit of a tiff. When leaving I entered my next destination and in spite it took me on a long cut and delivered me here. Bitch.
Okay, maybe by now I have spent enough time alone. My voice is hoarse from singing along with the radio and my cheeks are sore from whistling.
An hour outside Riudoso there was a guy on side of road with a backpack, not that unusual, but he was hauling up the hill on a unicycle. The road started curving and headed up into the mountains and trees. Just past the casino in Riudoso the road was gloriously backlit by the afternoon sun, highlighting the spray of the gentleman peeing against the guardrail on the side of road, as he continued to watch the cars going by over his shoulder.
The road curved back down out of the mountains, past the giant pistachio nut, and then White Sands. Driving up the hill past the missile test range I was thinking of when the Trinity site to the north is open (twice a year?). Finally I went back down the pass with Las Cruces spread out in the valley before me.
It was so nice to see Heather again. We haven't been apart that long in a very long time, especially after spending so much time together on the boat. Brown chicken, brown cow.
Well, there's a couple days of my life.
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