Most of week 16 of hiatus

I'd intended this post to cover this entire week but realized partway through that my sojourn to New Mexico covered so much new territory it should be a separate post.  And because of the timing of that sojourn, I'm late posting this.  But here's the first half of Week 16.


Monday, 20 through Thursday, 23 July 2020

Beginning of change
This has been a week of change, in more ways than one.  I began it by planning to continue my hiatus with 2 weeks of self-quarantine in New Mexico, to be followed either by resuming my travels with New Mexico as my next state to tour or by continuing to hunker down at the home of my friends Paula and Bruce outside Albuquerque.

To that end, I left David and Anna's house Tuesday, spent the first night once more at Cedar Hill State Park, then went on to Amarillo, intending to move from there to the Tucumcari (NM) KOA for a week.  That plan got torpedoed when I called Tucumcari Wednesday morning (they wouldn't take my reservation earlier) and they told me both that they were packed and could barely squeeze me into the middle of the campground (making dog-walking very difficult) and that so many campers had dogs they were thinking of adding a surcharge for pets.  Impossible for me to believe I could stay there a full week.

I still had the reservation paid for at the Amarillo KOA so drove the 9 hours (for me, 5½ for Google's drivers) from Cedar Hill up there, wondering what to do next.  Apparently all the people who stop at Tucumcari also stop at Amarillo, because that campground too was bursting with dogs and I found it almost impossible to take mine anywhere without encountering one or more others.  I decided to go down to the Lubbock KOA (figuring few people go through Lubbock on their way to anywhere else) and maybe go from there to a campground in southern NM for a week.

But somewhere in the 2 days of driving, I realized my essentially rebellious self was revolting at the thought of spending yet more time hunkered down anywhere.  I was back on the road where I'd been for 2 years straight and happy to be there, ready again to go places and see things.  All state-owned facilities in NM are closed - campgrounds, museums, parks - and though there are still federally- and privately-owned places that have reopened, a lot I'd want to see in NM would be closed to me.

The virus seems more under control in Colorado than it looked a few weeks ago (the situation is incredibly fluid everywhere), but I didn't want to go in August, figuring the place would be packed with families.  The only places that seem truly safe (at the moment) are in the Northeast, but I'd have to travel through multiple states that aren't safe just to get there, an unappealing option.  I decided my choices were to continue hunkering down or to continue my travels doing my level best to stay safe - continuing wearing a mask and gloves and maintaining as much distance as I can when I'm out of my RV, washing my hands, all those measures we've been doing lately.  So my latest plan is to spend the month of August in Oklahoma.  Not a place to go to stay safe, and I may cut my month short if the virus starts raging out of control there, but at the moment that's where I think I'll go.

In the meantime, I saw parts of Texas on my drives that I've never seen before.  I've never been up to the Panhandle, for instance, so I took pages of notes while driving that I'll describe here in what will probably be a long and long-winded post of the 4 drives I took this week.

Where I've been living these last 4 months

David & Anna's house & garden

where I parked the last 4 months + some neighborhood

neighborhood looking the other direction

Richardson to Cedar Hill via Belt Line

Richardson to Cedar Hill State Park
I've made this drive before - I used Belt Line again to go west and south - but as always saw things I'd missed on the earlier trip.  I made one last stop at my storage unit, taking one last look at the life I put on hold for this trip.  I could tell how much more comfortable the dogs and even Lily were when I took them to Anna & David's house than in the RV - so much more room to run and wrestle and sprawl out in - and felt like I was living a half-life: half on the road (i.e. living in the RV) and half in a home (i.e. parked in one place for weeks and months at a time).  It helped make it clear to me I either need to live in one world or the other, but the mix just wasn't working for me or my critters.

And I made one last stop at the City of Richardson's recycle center.  It'll be a while before I find another place that accepts not only glass but also plastic bags.

Along the way to the state park I passed a number of businesses I hadn't noticed before: Collins Aerospace (now part of Raytheon, supplies aerospace and defense products); Inogen (supplies portable oxygen); Ribbon ("networking and communications solutions"); ESI ("information technology solutions, hardware and software solutions"); Winzer (one of US's "foremost" distribution, maintenance, repair and operation products, including electrical, chemical, automotive and fastener supplies); Unicom (IT services); Rackmount Solutions (providing "comprehensive product lines and infrastructure solutions all backed by good stuff" [I swear it's a quote]).  I got the message that there're a lot of problems out there because so many companies are supplying solutions.

Other sights along the way
I passed Duck Creek Linear Park and was intrigued by the name.  Couldn't really find an answer online, but apparently it's "linear" because the park is actually a trail that follows the creek.  Nice green space in the urban environment.

I passed a church with the sign: Do unto others as though you were the others.

I passed a More Light Presbyterian Church.  Having never heard of this, I looked it up and learned this is a group of Presbyterian churches working toward participation of "LGBQIA+" people "in the church and in full society."

For a short time I was behind a red Mustang convertible with the top down.  The driver held a cigar out of the car and used a hair brush on his sparse gray hair.  His mid-life crisis car?  But he was having fun so who cares?

I passed the Carrollton Black Cemetery.  I think I mentioned this place before but just in case I didn't, here's the link to the historical marker there.   https://www.hmdb.org

Also in Carrollton I passed the Semihan Church, which turns out to be a Southern Baptist church for Korean speakers.

I passed Global Industrial Co., which advertises "desking and filing."  They supply office furniture solutions, apparently, though I've never heard of "desking."

I saw an Aqua-Tots swim school, which seems to be a chain of businesses that teaches kids from 4 months to 12 years how to be comfortable in the water.

Vira Insight designs and installs "complete retail store environments."

Both a Milguard (windows and doors) distribution center and a Shorr center ("one of the country's largest independent packing distribution firms") are located at the Wildlife Commerce Park, an oxymoron if I've ever heard one.  I can't imagine why a business park would be named for wildlife - surely not to honor the critters whose habitat they destroyed, so maybe to make the clients feel better.

Grand Prairie is home to Lone Star Park, a horse racing track that has 2 live racing seasons each year - just not right now because of the virus.

When I got to the state park, my first task was dumping my tanks, which I hadn't done in 8 days so was getting worried about overfilling.  And after getting us set up in our campsite and walking the dogs, I treated the blackwater tank with cleaning solution, ice and water from the park's faucet.  I'll let the cleaner work for a day or two of driving.

northwest to Amarillo

departing Cedar Hill for Amarillo

Cedar Hill State Park to Amarillo KOA
I got on the road at 8:30 and headed west to Ft. Worth, then northwest on US 287 for the whole drive.  Because I covered so much territory, much of it new to me and all of it new to me as an adult, I noted lots of new sights.

Lots of building going on in the Fort Worth area - many new houses, new schools, new apartments just built or still under construction.  Ft. Worth's official slogan is "Where the West Begins."  Maybe so, though I think that's rapidly receding into the past.

I passed a Life Force Church, with affiliates across the country; they "believe Christianity is about relationship."

I passed the towns of Rhome, Decatur and Paradise, and saw rolling hills with very long views of farm and ranch country, lots of mesquite trees.

We stopped at a small rest area so I could walk the dogs and found vicious stickers all through the grass.  The ones all over Cedar Hill State Park were soft and stuck all over Gracie's coat because she kept rolling in them, but they didn't hurt the dogs' feet.  These we saw this day were hard and had long thorns on them.  Both dogs but especially Dexter got multiples stuck in their feet at a time and when I took them out I too got stuck.  Which is why I can state authoritatively that those things are vicious.

I passed the US Forest Service's Caddo-LBJ Natural Grasslands.  It's 2 separate tracts of land (the Caddo and the LBJ) that were originally set aside in the 1930s to restore the eroded soil (Dust Bowl era, you remember).  Now they're used for cattle grazing, wildlife habitat, and a wide variety of recreational pursuits.  For hunters, weapons are limited to shotguns, muzzleloaders and archery.

I passed the towns of Alvord and Sunset, where I saw an auto salvage yard that was entirely filled with pickup trucks, no passenger cars; then the turnoff to Amon G. Carter Lake.  I've forever heard his name in historic connection with Ft. Worth but was surprised he was getting a lake near Wichita Falls named for him.  I learned he was the first owner and publisher of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram and was a nationally known booster of the city of Fort Worth.

I passed Wagonseller Road and wondered again about the names passed down to us from long ago.

I saw a very long train with hopper cars filled with what looked like coal.  I looked it up and learned it was very probably coal since TX still has a lot of it that is actively being mined.

A truck was parked by the side of the road with flashing lights and, though it turned out to be a completely non-official struck, still every vehicle on the road moved to the other lane as soon as the lights came in view.  I guess that lesson has been learned.

I passed Henrietta, Jacksboro, and later Burkburnett and Iowa Park.  These names used to be so familiar with me - we lived in Wichita Falls when I was in the 8th and 9th grades - but I haven't heard them in maybe 40 years.

I saw several billboards with the message "Pray for Peace.  2 Thess. 3:16."  I looked up 2nd Thessalonians 3:16 and found this: "Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way.  The Lord be with all of you."  To me the message and the Bible verse don't quite sync up, but I'm all for peace wherever it can be found.

I stopped in Vernon ("Where the Real West Begins") to stretch our legs and noted what seemed to be an impoverished downtown area.  The city's official website didn't want to tell me about local industries, which may be an explanation of its own.

I passed through several road work zones but in one I saw something new: the workers had put out a series of orange and white barrels so they could close the left lane and force us all into the right one.  And beside every 2nd or 3rd barrel, a road worker was stationed, apparently for the specific purpose to watch the passing traffic, because that's what they were all doing, attentively.  I couldn't figure out what they were looking for; the watchers at the exits of grocery stores are more understandable than this was.

I passed the town of Electra, population 2,800, where a sign urged me to Visit Historic Electra.  Online all I could find to qualify that place as "historic" was the fact that it's been officially designated the Pump Jack Capital of Texas, pump jacks being equipment for the oil workers.

Speaking of which, many of the oil wells I passed weren't working but then I came across 2 entire fields full of oil wells that were definitely working.

Near the town of Harrold I saw a 1960s era aqua convertible with the top down sitting in someone's front yard.  What was odd was that there were 2 statues sitting behind the back seat where the rear dashboard would be if the top were closed.  These statues were 2 bikini-wearing women, both with extremely pale skin.  Strange sight.

For much of the drive I saw tire debris - sometimes a lot of it, sometimes blocking the lanes of traffic.  I remember years ago mentioning this to my cousin who for years owned a tire business and he told me it happens every summer.  People try to save money buying retreads, or they move in from other states and don't think it matters, and then the Texas summer weather hits and tires that get hot anyway driving on the roads just disintegrate when the roads themselves heat up from the summer sun.  The combined heat makes for hazardous driving.

I passed Chillicothe, pop. 745.  The name rang a bell, of course, and I learned online that not only is there a Chillicothe in Ohio, which is what I was remembering, but also one in Illinois and another in Missouri.

I was just coming to the crest of a hill when I saw close ahead a large tractor pulling a mower across the road.  I got lucky because he'd already passed through my lane, but the pickup driving near me in the other lane had to come to an abrupt halt.  Why on earth that tractor driver couldn't use elementary safety tactics and cross where he'd be visible to oncoming traffic is beyond me.

I got passed by a pickup with Oregon license plates, 3 Trump 2020 stickers and a Hillary For Jail sticker.  I'm going to guess a resident of eastern Oregon, generally a more conservative area than the western part.

I stopped at a Valero station in Quanah for some gasoline, and while I was in the middle of filling my tank the price jumped up from $1.71 to $1.89/gallon.  I got the original price on all of it, but that was some increase in the space of no time.  But the station across the street was charging $2.19.

Quanah bills itself as City of Legends, and it was named for Chief Quanah Parker who apparently visited the new settlement occasionally; other famous locals included a serial killer, an astronaut, a well known Texas Ranger, a world champion bull rider, Fred Koch of the famous Koch brothers, and a man who apparently single-handedly saved Chartres Cathedral in France from destruction by American forces during WWII.   https://www.themarianroom.com/chartres-cathedral-saved

As much as I've complained about Texas drivers, I should also have been praising the ease of driving in Texas.  Signs are posted often enough for me to have a pretty good idea of where I am and when I'll get where I'm going.  They're pretty good about letting me know if there's a rest area coming up - and kudos for creating lots of rest areas in the first place - and other points of interest.  I've driven in a lot of states and found more consistent road surfaces and far politer (and safer) drivers than here, but there aren't many that have their signs done right as Texas has.

At several places along the road I saw electronic signs asking drivers to "end the streak" of Texas highway deaths, with 1,802 already this year.

I'd been passing through Childress County and stopped at the county offices at one point to consult the map; in the parking lot I noticed a reserved parking place for the county sheriff, Sheriff Pigg.  I think if I were him, I'd change my name.

I passed a highway sign warning that hitchhikers may be escaping inmates.

I started seeing campaign signs telling me I was now in Ronny Jackson territory - the doctor who used to be the presidential doctor for Obama and Trump and is now likely to win a seat in Congress with Trump's support.

I found a Farm Network radio station from Childress and got to hear commodity prices (the crude oil price is down).

I passed the town of Estelline, pop. 145, where large fields of cotton are growing.

I crossed the Prairie Dog Town fork of the Red River (nearly dry).  There were once many prairie dog towns throughout this area, but the early settlers looked on the critters as pests and destroyed almost all of their towns.  There's still one in Lubbock that I think is a tourist attraction.

I'm seeing red dirt in this part of the state.

I passed Memphis, and learned that 9 other states besides Texas claim a town named Memphis, not to mention Egypt, which I think they were all named after.

The town of Hedley, pop. 329, is home to fields of corn, cotton and cows - specifically Angus.

Nearing Amarillo, I came on the town of Clarendon, pop. 2,026, where "history is still happening here," they say.  They boast of the Old Saints Museum, based on the idea that Clarendon was originally seen as a "sobriety settlement" in contrast to the boom town life of other places in the area.

I passed the Charles Goodnight Historical Center in the nearly nonexistent town of Goodnight.  He was known as the Cattle King of the Texas Panhandle, creator of the chuckwagon, and one of the establishers of the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail, which ran from west Texas up to the railhead at Denver, CO.  Lonesome Dove is loosely based on his life.

At the small town of Claude, pop. 1,196, I was informed I was in Sod Poodle Country.  The Sod Poodles are a minor league baseball team based in Amarillo, feeding into the San Diego Padres.

Several times I crossed paths with a train with the sole cargo of containers - both the type that sit on docks and get shipped on freighters as well as the type with wheels that are carted around behind semis.  Many were stacked on top of each other, so I was seeing a whole lot of containers.

As I went farther northwest, I still found rolling hills but here there are huge fields of scrubbrush and stunted dead trees, and lots of cedars and mesquite.  Looks like my idea of West Texas.

Coming into Amarillo (pop. 190,000) I passed the Kwahadi Kiva Indian Museum.  They're Pueblo and Plains Indian people, and this museum says it shows fine arts and crafts items of theirs.

The KOA sits in the northeast edge of Amarillo just off Historic Route 66.  It was a long drive covering 9½ hours and left me feeling jangled for some time after we got settled in our space.  I didn't try to tackle the question of where do I go next, given the surprising nonavailability of Tucumcari's KOA, but instead left all those questions for the morning.

A famous restaurant in Amarillo is the Big Texan that offers a FREE (they say) 72 ounce steak dinner if it's eaten within an hour.  The KOA offers free limo transport to and from the restaurant; I saw the limos when they picked up and dropped off campers - long black ones embellished with a pair of cow horns on the hoods.  Welcome to Texas.


Amarillo KOA to Lubbock KOA
A local TV station described this area as the "high plains" and, although I don't remember ever being somewhere that qualified as high plains, I'm sure this is what they look like.

For some unknown reason, this campground is really quiet.  It sits just off I-40 Business Route, aka Historic Rt. 66, aka Amarillo Blvd.  Just beyond that is a heavily used railroad track.  The campground is about 2/3 to 3/4 full at the moment.  And the only sound I can hear clearly is a nearby rooster crowing in the early morning.  Nice.  Maybe the wind is providing a white noise to drown out everything else.

The number of dogs in this campground is incredible.  I set out with my dogs one direction, make a 90° turn when I see a dog ahead, only to see a 2nd dog, so I turn back the way I came only to find we're being followed by 2 more dogs and some people who see my dogs jumping around like crazy and don't bother to stop and wait with their dogs until I can get mine farther away - it was a mess.  At one point I couldn't go in any direction because I encountered one or more dogs everywhere, and I just had to hide the dogs behind a cabin (or Kabin, in KOA-speak) and wait for the traffic to clear.

Never having had any upper-body strength to speak of, I have a lot of trouble holding them when they both jump around and want to rush over to any new dog they see.  And 2 dogs the size of mine rushing over to a dog of any size is intimidating and trouble usually ensues, even if mine aren't aggressive.  To other dogs they look aggressive, and that starts an unfortunate chain of behavior.  I do wish I had normal dogs, although maybe they'd both act more normal if they weren't together.  But whatever, I can't be comfortable staying in a place teeming with dogs.

I saw the majority of campers leaving, beginning while it was still dark, and asked one of the staff if that were normal.  He said most people stayed only 1 night and long-term to them was 4 or 5 days.  Same thing Tucumcari told me, and that's not what I've experienced at campgrounds anywhere else I've stayed, where lots of people came to stay for their whole week or 2-week vacation.  Maybe it's just those who travel on I-40 who travel that way.

Back on the road, I saw another train that was also hauling many cars with containers double-stacked on them.  I guess this is how things are shipped these days - instead of driving them across the country, they get put on trains and then trucked a short distance to their final destination.

Amarillo
I drove for the first leg of the trip along Historic Route 66, which runs through the northern part of the city.  Amarillo advertises itself as "Open Spaces - Endless Opportunities" and it's true that the sky does seem really big here.

I saw signs of a thriving Thai community as well as a sizable Spanish-speaking population.  In some places Spanglish ruled, such as at the Nueva Era Tire Shop.  Amarillo has a chain of gas stations called Toot n' Totum - gasoline and convenience store.

I saw 4 lanes of traffic come to a dead stop while a stray yellow Lab tried to decide which side of the road he wanted to be on.  I was impressed with the compassion of so many drivers.

Amarillo seems to be laid out in a grid, making it easier for me to get found when I took a fork labeled "west" when I should have taken the one marked "east," though I have no idea how I was supposed to guess that.  Nonetheless, the sunshine told me I'd ended up going south instead of west and the grid let me easily get over to the street I needed.  Amarillo also has a safety measure where residential streets don't empty directly onto busy arteries but instead have a buffer street that parallels the artery and focuses the incoming traffic to one or 2 entrances.

On the minus side, Amarillo is in desperate need of a competent traffic engineer.  That's what Daddy was for most of the time I was growing up, so that's what we learned at the dinner table.  Traffic lights weren't even remotely synchronized so every light was red, every left turn showed a protected arrow even when no cars were in that lane in either direction.  And this pattern didn't seem to be benefiting the north/south traffic that were also stopping at every light. Lots of people wasted lots of time sitting at these lights with nothing accomplished.  It wasn't even rush hour - I left the campground at 10:00.

I passed Tascosa Blvd. and was immediately transported to November 22, 1963, when we were afraid the state quarter-final football game would get canceled because of Pres. Kennedy's assassination.  Rider High School in Wichita Falls (where I went) was playing Amarillo Tascosa High School, which won the game I'm sorry to say.  The assassination was too stunning and mind-boggling for me to have any emotion about, so it's a good thing we had a cathartic football game the same day.

A produce booth along the road advertised Colorado Peaches, and I suddenly realized Colorado is a lot closer to Amarillo than Fredericksburg (TX) is.  In fact, I'd seen an ad for an Oklahoma business on the Amarillo news this morning.

A billboard told me that this year's Parade of Homes will be done as a virtual experience.  Incredible the ways people are trying to adapt to a killer virus lurking somewhere out there.

Back on the road
The southbound road I was on by then took me straight to I-27, which I rode for 113 miles to Lubbock.

I passed a sign noting the turn to the town of Canyon to visit the Panhandle-Plains History Museum.  They claim to be the largest history museum in Texas with displays and artifacts from dinosaurs to conquistadors.  It's on the campus of West Texas A & M Univ.

Another sign told me I'd come to the turnoff for the Palo Duro Canyon, a place I've wanted to visit for years.  I'll come back this way when I do my month in Texas.

The land in this area is wide open plains, still with rolling hills but a feeling that you can almost see forever.

I passed the turn for a town named Happy - "The Town without a Frown!"

One lane of the road was completely strewn with blocks of wood that had spilled from a small box, also in the lane.  Dangerous.

I passed the towns of Tulia, Kress (not the variety store), and Plainview.  I passed fields of cotton (or soybeans), corn, more cotton, cows.  I saw a field with 2 mares and 2 very young colts.  Very sweet.

I saw grain elevators all over; one large set-up was labeled Producers Grain Coop.  I saw another batch labeled MA SE CA, with the letters in pairs running vertically.  I looked them up and learned Maseca claims to be the leading global brand of corn flour.

I passed the turn for Hale Center, home of the Hale County Farm & Ranch Museum, which I might go to when I come back for my month in Texas.  Hale Center is also home to Gary's Cotton Boll Gin and, though it looks dilapidated, seems to still be functioning.

Next along were the towns of Littlefield, Petersburg, and then Abernathy, where I ran across City Gin Inc. and a sign: "Wear More Cotton."  Ever since I realized I can't wear wool any more, I do indeed wear more cotton.

Coming into Lubbock, pop. about 260,000, I passed the Silent Wings Museum, "The Legacy of the WWII Glider Pilots," located at the Preston Smith Airport.  Preston Smith was the Texas governor for a term when I was in college, and apparently the airport was named for him because he was an alum of Texas Tech Univ. (located here in Lubbock).

I also passed the American Windmill Museum, shown on signs as the Wind Power Center, with a collection of 160 types of American windmills.  It's next door to the Agriculture Museum, which says it'll take you "from horse-drawn implements to the tech-savvy computer GPS driven equipment and farmers of today."  Both these sound interesting and I'd like to come back to visit them.

I was headed to the Buddy Holly Center.  I had to skip Palo Duro Canyon but I wasn't skipping this.  Actually, I did end up skipping it because they wanted $6 (senior) to go in, but I bought a CD in the gift shop and I can come back another time.  It was already 2:30 and I was getting tired.  But I took these photos.

incredible that he could have changed the world that much in just a couple of years

inner courtyard/entrance

exterior - repurposed historic train station

appropriately railroad-y sign

I took the dogs across the street to walk them in the Buddy Holly park, but it was really hot and we just dodged from tree to tree, trying to stay in the shade.

the McCartney Oak

Buddy Holly with Wall of Fame behind him

I passed Lubbock High School, home of the Lubbock Westerners which seems like an odd mascot, but I was very impressed with the building which was much more elaborate than the usual high school.

the high school

I passed the Texas Tech Univ. campus, with buildings of much the same appearance as the high school.  There were some very fancy homes across the street which were surely built at least as early as the school, if not earlier.  In fact, the row of fancy houses continued for a mile beyond the campus, showing I was clearly in the nicer area of town.  In fact, even though the income level of the houses fell off as I continued, I never was in a not nice area of town and, judging by my experience, there isn't one.  With a population as high as Lubbock's, though, I must have just not been in the right places.  But I found Lubbock surprisingly charming, something I never expected.

And so to the Lubbock KOA, a comfortable place for the night.