Friday, 6 November 2020
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| today's route (northern part) |
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| today's route (southern part) |
One thing I missed while I was in Dalhart was the XIT Museum, about a ranch in this part of Texas that played a prominent role in Texas history. Between 1885 and 1912, the ranch included 3,000,000 acres and ran 200 miles along the TX-NM border with up to 150,000 cows at a time. In other words, a big deal. Sometime when we're not fighting a pandemic, I'd like to learn more about it.
On the road
The land at first was mostly flat, with occasional gullies carved by rivers, though currently without rivers.
I passed a turn labeled for Boys Ranch and wondered if it were a town or the actual ranch. Apparently it's both. It has a post office and its own zip code but it's unincorporated. It was begun in 1939 for what we now call at-risk youth and makes fulsome claims of the help they offer boys and girls. However, I found a Fox News item from last year about men who are now coming forward about the horrors of living there 50 years ago. It sounds like what we've been hearing from the survivors of people abused by Catholic priests. Sadly, the Boys Ranch people give token acknowledgement of the problems they say are in the past, but don't seem to take it very seriously - much like the Catholic church has been doing. Even the Wikipedia page makes no mention of these victims. Here's the link if you're interested in what the men are saying. https://www.foxnews.com/boys-ranch-more-men-allege-abuse
As I drove south, I passed vast fields of mesquite and cactus.
I passed a wind farm where half the turbines were motionless and half were going just fine. It looked odd.
In Vega, pop. 884, I saw a sign for the Milburne Price Culture Museum. Its website is on Facebook so I can't tell you what it is, except that Trip Advisor says it has exhibits about local history. And I also don't know if it's named for 1 person - Price (first name Milburne) - or 2 people - Price and Milburne. Life has so many mysteries.
I came to the town of Wildorado, and the name intrigued me. Turns out it's named for a nearby creek and once had potential for grandeur. In the early 1900s it had a railroad station, a bank, a post office, a hotel and a newspaper. Today it's an unincorporated town of fewer than 200.
I heard someone on NPR explain that COVID-19 got its name from the 19 pounds of extra weight people put on during lockdowns. Like the Freshman 10 that kids gain their first year of college. Actually, I find that a reassuring idea, making me feel not quite so alone in my changed habits.
I bypassed Amarillo and headed south toward Palo Duro Canyon, located close to the town of Canyon. In that area I saw a sign at a church that said, "In the Name of Jesus - RAIN." Which gives a clear picture of the weather around here lately.
I also passed a sign advertising the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum at Canyon. Online I learned this museum is on the campus of West Texas A&M University and is the largest history museum in the state. It includes the history, geology and culture of the Panhandle from prehistory to modern wind farms. It actually sounds interesting, yet another place to visit on a return trip.
Palo Duro Canyon
I got lucky here, because I got here before 9:30. The office told me they only allow visitors with reservations - even for day use only - but since I was so early they were willing to let me in without one.
Palo Duro Canyon is the 2nd largest canyon in North America (behind the Grand Canyon, of course). For some reason, none of the park's literature or signs wants to give its dimensions, but I found online that it's about 120 miles long, as much as 20 miles wide in places, and 820' - 1000' deep. To see anything much of the canyon, you have to drive down into it. The state park has a road the warns of a 10% grade with many double-s curves. The park ranger at the entrance told me the round-trip drive takes about 45 minutes. The road is your standard mountain-type road and, after what I went through at Mariposa Pass in Colorado, it was a piece of cake. Unlike the State of Colorado, Texas State Parks has heard of guard rails.
Not too far from the entrance is the visitor center and a viewpoint, where I saw 2 separate couples taking photos. Here're my photos from there.
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| facing south |
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| facing north |
Spectacular, isn't it?
There was also a display in honor of the CCC, who built this park in the 1930s.
The park didn't have any signs saying "look here at the 4 distinct layers of rock" so I wasn't sure what to look for. But this photo might be showing some of them.
As I drove down into the canyon, I saw red dirt, red rocks and brown rocks, blue shadows where the morning sun hadn't penetrated, green cedar/juniper and mesquite and, here and there, bright yellow gingko trees. The yellow splashes were a relief from all the earth colors.
And for scenery:
As I was driving out of the canyon and the park, I decided that, as interesting and impressive as all of this was, I really prefer my natural wonders from a distance. It's one thing to see scenery like this when I'm driving through it along the road, and another to drive down inside and dissect it, so to speak. I preferred the aerial view at the visitor center.
The brochure I got at the entrance described an atrocity that occurred here in the canyon in 1874. The so-called Red River War was a campaign the US Army waged against the Southern Plains Indians to clear them off their lands and onto reservations in Indian Territory in OK, so the lands could be seized and developed by white people. On Sept. 24, 1874, Col. Ranald Mackenzie, who is undoubtedly burning in Hell (I only believe in Hell when I come across people I think deserve it), led the 4th US Cavalry down into the canyon where 5 encampments of Indians were set up. They attacked the first of those, a Kiowa camp, where the Indians ran, leaving behind all their possessions. The army burned the teepees and all the winter food supply, then confiscated some horses for the troops and shot the remaining 1,100 horses. This left the Indians without food or horses with winter coming on. They had no choice but to walk to the Fort Sill reservation, forever losing their traditional way of life.
The morals of that story: don't trust the US Government if you're not white; don't trust greedy people; don't camp in a canyon, however valuable the shelter it provides; always have a Plan B.
One of the beneficiaries of this episode was Charles Goodnight who, in 1876, with his partner John Adair founded the JA Ranch in the canyon. Goodnight allowed others to shoot the Southern Plains Bison herds still in the area, so his cows would have more room, but fortunately his wife Mary Ann worried the bison would go extinct, and their efforts managed to save the herd.
Back on the road
I saw one lone wind turbine out on its own in a field, with no others in sight - and the sightline in that part of the country runs pretty far. Because I saw several houses in that general area, I'm guessing these local folks banded together to buy one for their joint use.
Google's directions for getting from the park onto !-27 southbound were just wacky. Instead of the obvious left turn under the overpass to merge onto the highway, they suggested either taking a FM road for miles to pick up another highway entrance or else to go straight for a mile, then turn left, then turn left, then turn left, then turn right to get back to the highway. Huh?? I could see the obvious route from their own aerial view.
I'd driven down the highway a few miles before I finally figured out where the rush of cold air was coming from that I'd felt all morning. When I cleaned the windows the other day, I must not have completely closed the passenger door, and as I drove it seemed to be getting looser and looser, which is how I figured out the problem. I thought there was supposed to be a warning light telling me a door was ajar but, if so, it didn't work. Thank goodness I figured it out before it flew open, likely taking Dexter with it, since he often leans against it when he's napping.
I got to the town of Happy, pop. 678, whose motto is The Town Without A Frown. They also claim to be The Financial Center of the Universe. I have no idea why. When I tried to look it up, the only thing of interest I found had nothing to do with that but instead with Texas secession. https://www.huffpost.com/10-things-we'd-lose-if-texas-actually-seceded Regarding that issue, I prefer Doonesbury's 1-week take on it, and the best link I could find begins here. https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2012/12/10 Keep clicking the forward button to the end at 2012/12/15; it was 6 days's worth.
Happy, by the way, was named for a nearby draw (water source) by the cowboys who'd been happy to find water there.
I was nearly out of the Panhandle by this point and decided that area is all about agriculture, and especially beef. There are support industries there, but the main financial driver must be cows, and the agriculture needed to support them.
I passed one of those electronic signs that said, "End the Traffic Fatalities - 3010 deaths on Texas roads this year."
I'd been seeing cotton fields since Amarillo, but when I got to the town of Kress, pop. 715, I started seeing more of them. The land was very flat in this area.
At Plainview, I cut off the interstate to head southeast. I bought gas at a Valero station for $1.51/gallon, the cheapest price I've found in a while. There's a strong Hispanic presence in this town.
Floydada
I was aiming for Floydada, pop. 2,750. I noticed the town's existence when I was young because I thought the name sounded funny. It's pronounced floy-DAY-dah, by the way. So since I was in the vicinity, I thought I'd stop by.
Once again, Google's information was a problem. They'd directed me into town via a dirt road which did not run past a park, as they'd said, but instead through a very industrial section devoted to agriculture, cotton in particular.
These are cotton bales, in a form I hadn't seen before today. They're long rectangles and must weigh a lot. I'm not sure the point of packing them like this, because they don't look very portable. But after I saw this site, I started seeing these rectangular bales in fields.
Floydada is in the wind corridor of the country, running from Minnesota down to the TX Panhandle. The town also sits at the intersection of 2 power grids, so it's in a favorable position for developing wind power, but I didn't see any signs that that was being done yet.
Floydada claims the title of Pumpkin Capital of the USA, and I did see a small field of pumpkins, but it was next to a field of cotton. My impression is that Floydada is all about cotton. It seemed to be an old, tired town.
Back on the road
From here we had about an hour to go to get to Lubbock.
Most of the way, what I saw were fields of cotton and wind farms. Surprisingly, no oil wells today.
I passed through Cone (pop. 70 in 2000), Ralls (pop. 1,827), and Idalou (pop. 2,291 in 2018). In Idalou, I came across the Texas A&M Forest Service, which seemed a bit bizarre and Aggie-like since there really aren't many trees out here. But it turns out this is where they have the West Texas Nursery, which is A&M's only seedling nursery in the state. They produce and sell about 20 different tree species each year. They say their forest service has been protecting and sustaining forests since 1915.
And then we came to Lubbock, pop. 229,573. When I was here in July, I visited several places, including the Buddy Holly Museum, and it had been a long day, so I went straight to the campground, where we had plans to stay for 3 nights.
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