Thursday, 14 through Saturday, 16 January 2021
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| Thursday's and Saturday's routes |
Errands first
I'd intended to stop for gasoline at a Valero station down the road that, 2 days ago, had regular for $1.87. I was in a hurry then and didn't stop, which turned out to be a mistake. In the intervening 2 days, they'd raised their price to $2.15. A hike like that might make sense on a summer weekend but not a winter Thursday. I was so peeved I decided to head down the road and see if gas was any cheaper in one of the smaller towns, which I've noticed sometimes it is.
Being still peeved, I decided not to stop for groceries here but to make do with what I had for a couple of days.
However, I did stop at a laundromat. It'd been weeks since I last did laundry, and though I washed out my underwear at night, I didn't want to do that with t-shirts, so I was running out of clean ones. What surprised me about this laundromat was that they had numerous signs posted about the virus: they insisted anyone entering the building wear a mask, and they asked customers to wait outside while the machines ran through their cycles, so that no more than 10 people would be inside at one time. I've seen signs at convenience stores now and then saying these things, but I can't say I've seen them enforced, and this was the first time I've seen that at a laundromat. So I felt safer and got my clothes clean.
On the road
On my trips to and from Austin, I've seen electronic highway signs announcing a CLEAR Alert, listing a description of the car being sought, like for an AMBER or a SILVER Alert. But I couldn't figure out from this basic sign what a CLEAR Alert was about. Today I heard on the radio that it stands for "Coordinated Law Enforcement Adult Rescue." Online I've learned that it's supposed to fill the gap between missing children and missing senior citizens, and it can be used to locate any adults that are believed to be missing or to have been abducted.
Once I saw that acronym I got curious about the others. AMBER stands for "America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response," which isn't particularly descriptive, but it was named after a little girl named Amber who was abducted and murdered in 1996 in Texas. I can't tell that SILVER Alert stands for anything except presumably the silver color of the hair of the missing person. These alerts aren't a national program exactly but instead are adopted by each individual state government, so the criteria vary a little by state. Still, the SILVER Alert is typically used not only for seniors but also for those of any age with mental disabilities.
Throughout the entire drive, I had to contend with a very strong wind, which made driving on these country roads more challenging.
Towns and county courthouses
Today's drive took me through cities as large as Mansfield, pop. 70,170, ("Minutes to Everything, Second to None"), and towns as small as Covington, pop. 269, and everything in between.
And we went through 2 county seats - in Cleburne and in Hillsboro.
Cleburne, pop. 29,337, was founded in 1867, and looks like just what it is - a small rural city in the Texas Hill Country. But I found an oddity regarding its courthouse.
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| identified by Google as the Johnson County Courthouse |
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| close-up - it says "High School" |
Despite this building having very clearly been built to be a school, I would have been willing to accept Google's insistence that it's the current courthouse. However, my route to this building took me past another building that looked very much like a county courthouse.
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| Johnson County Courthouse in Cleburne |
This building even has "Johnson County Court House" carved into the stone across the front. It took a surprisingly diligent search, but I've finally learned that this is the official courthouse. It was built in 1913 to replace the previous courthouse that had burned down. This one was designed by admirers of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School of architecture. It went through a substantial renovation, though, between 2005 and 2007, and for that period the county courthouse functions were moved to the 1918 high school building (at top, left) that had been renovated in 2004. Now that the courthouse functions have been moved back into this 1913 building, the high school building continues to serve as a Justice Center.
Apparently, Google's mapping program has failed to catch up with a change that happened 14 years ago. This, of course, is the same mapping program that keeps trying to send me to back doors of businesses and to take shortcuts through alleys that might save me 1 minute of driving time.
Hillsboro, pop. 8,456, originally spelled its name as "Hillsborough." They changed it in 1854 to comply with some regulation the post office had come up with, and "Hillsboro" it still is.
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| Hill County Courthouse in Hillsboro |
This building is the 5th for Hill County and was built in 1890 (it seems they'd finally found a keeper). This is considered the Second Empire style (I'm going to have to take an architecture course after this trip, along with the one for cow behavior). In 1993 this building was completely gutted by fire - burned to its 4 stone walls - and the county restored it, rather than rebuilding it, for which I thank them, since my personal taste thinks this is much more attractive than almost anything I've seen built since 1993.
Scenery
For scenery along the drive today, I saw scattered gatherings of houses here and there, not associated with any organized town; these were interspersed with farms. Aside from fields, plowed and otherwise, I saw cows, horses, donkeys and goats. I saw one front yard with 2 flagpoles - one with 2 Trump flags on it and the other with the US flag plus 2 more Trump flags. I still saw some Trump flags and signs here and there, but the numbers were noticeably fewer than I was seeing before the events of January 6th. This area looked just like the many other areas where support for him had been heavy, so I thought the substantially lower amount of visual support was interesting.
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| Great Pyrenees |
I think the dog was a Great Pyrenees - they're typically 2½' to the top of their backs so, yeah, big dogs. They were bred for tending livestock, which also fits in with what I saw.
All these white critters of various sizes in a field made for a nice picture, just not one I could stop to take.
I kept getting shoved around the road by the very strong winds, which were coming from the north, so for half my drive were crosswinds.
I stopped for gas in Whitney, pop. 2,087, (here the price was $1.95, so it was worth waiting for), and the sign on the door of the attached convenience store said, "Mask are optional." All of that is their idea - the grammar and the policy. I understand there may be resistance here in small-town Texas to the idea of wearing a mask, or even the idea that the virus is real, given the probable level of support around here for Pres. Trump and given his hostility to the idea that the virus mattered to anybody. But still, did they actually have to post a sign? Couldn't they have just not said anything and not enforced anything? But I wanted to get the lower gasoline price, so I wore gloves and a mask and hoped that would be enough.
Friday
Lake Whitney State Park
This is a nice place. Almost all the camping areas were closed - I suppose because of the virus - and even with that there were very few campers on Thursday night, which was fine with me. And even though the only other camper in my area was right next to me and had a large dog, it still wasn't a problem because his dog was well-behaved and didn't try to attack mine, which meant that mine were well-behaved too.
It was a very different story when other campers came in for Friday night, but my dogs and I still had a lot of time when we were free to walk around the park. The dogs kept finding stickers with their feet, but otherwise it was a pleasant place to stay. Unlike most of the state parks, here at least half the campsites were for tent camping only - no utilities except water.
Lake Whitney has an annual bass fishing tournament, and the state park has several facilities for fishing. A 15-minute walk from our campsite got us to a fish cleaning station, with a sign saying the facility was closed for the season. They had an illustrated sign nearby showing 8 different kinds of fish that could be caught in this lake - 3 kinds of bass, 2 kinds of catfish, 2 kinds of sunfish, and a bluegill.
The wind blew so hard on Thursday that there were whitecaps on the lake when we got in. It didn't settle down much on Friday, either, which wasn't a problem for us, but those like my next-door neighbor who liked to sit outside over a campfire had a harder time with the wind. Still, natural phenomena come along with the camping experience, like it or not.
By Friday evening, it looked like most campsites had been taken, suggesting this is a very popular state park.
Saturday
I stopped in Whitney for groceries and then headed back north.
In Alvarado, I passed a shop selling pet supplies with a sign saying, "Want a fish tank? Let minnow." (It actually took me a minute to get it.)
I went through the town of Venus, pop. 2,960, with the slogan "Stellar by Nature." The town was established in the late 1880s, originally named Gossip, and then named Venus for the daughter of a local doctor, and I wish I knew the story behind that set of circumstances.
When we got back to Cedar Hill, I discovered the campground was entirely full, which is something I haven't seen even during the summer. And I finally realized the reason for all this surge to the state parks is that this is a 3-day weekend, in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King. (Note that he's not a medical doctor any more than Dr. Jill Biden is, but I haven't heard anybody complain about using that title for him, like I've heard about her. But maybe that's just sour grapes as much as anything.) I was actually surprised so many people were getting 3-day weekends for this until I remembered with the virus, lots of people may be working from home anyway.
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