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dolariMonday, August 4th - Day One - San Antonio, Texas to Albuquerque, NM
The truck was packed before I woke up, Emily isn't one to sit around and wait. We had a small breakfast with the folks, and got ready for the trip.
Before I left, I washed my hands in the downstairs bathroom and noticed in the mirror one of mom's craft wreaths. It'd been there for a while, but it struck me as a Bad Thing, not so much for me (or for the wreath itself), but for all of us. What do you think?
We packed up some sodas, mom gave us a few sandwiches and we moved out into the truck. Emily would be driving this stretch while I got some sleep/pictures. We said our goodbyes, and while we were having some parting words, Emily took off, thinking we were done.
OOPS. :D
(I called them back, finished up.)
We left thirty minutes late, mostly because of me being really slow, but we hit the road...and suddenly, we had an unexpected detour. In Boerne, we pulled off down FM 1376. I'd known that Emily wanted to hit Luckenbach to see if our license plates had been put up yet. The side trip was nice, though. Instead of leaving the Hill Country on a freeway, zipping by at 70MPH, I got to see it at a leisurely 45MPH, down a mostly empty road.
We got into Luckenbach bright and early before any crowds had shown up, and the caretakers were milling about the old post office. We asked them if they'd put up our plates yet, but they hadn't. When we come back, we'll check for them again. I hope those plates are right next to each other, and stay together a good long while. :)
We left Luckenbach noting that good ole' Hondo was wearing black. We'll miss you, too, Hondo.
The trip was pretty uneventful, through the Hill Country. Emily drove, I took pics, as it would be for about 99% of the trip. I kept myself etertained twittering like mad and playing around on the Sidekick, which would get me in trouble later. We followed RM 1376 through Cain City, then US 290 to Fredericksburg, passing the most Northwestern Point I'd Ever Ridden My Bike (US 290/US87 Fork), up US 87 to Cherry Spring, Loyal Valley, Hedwig's Hill, Mason, to Camp San Saba.
We stopped off at Camp San Saba because I'd believed it was the ghost town of an old spanish for (For San Saba, in fact). Problem was - it wasn't it. Instead there was just an old graveyard and an empty lot with a historical marker saying that it was settled in the 1860s, not the 1600s/1700s, like I'd imagined. Still, it was a neat historical place, someplace I'd never been to before, and the first of many sights I'd never seen before.
Camp San Saba, also marked out something very important - we were nt only out of the Hill Country, where I'd spent most of my life exploring, but in totally uncharted territory for me. I knew places and things out here, but had never EVER seen them in person. It was an exciting voyage into the unknown for me. :)
We continued up US 87, through Brady (the geographical center of Texas - I wanted to see the EXACT center, but it was way off course, and we were already a bit late, something that would catch up with us later)...
...Whiteland, and Melvin.
In Melvin, we pulled over at a reststop to stretch our legs a bit. We each had a sandwhich and it was here that I first really noticed we were out of the hill country and into the Texas Plains. Flatter'n'flat out here. I'd heard a rumbling noise coming from the truck as well, and began to get worried that the truck's muffler had fallen off again, but that noise was the radiator! It was bubbling furiously. It hadn't overheated, or even gotten too too hot, but it'd been so hot for so long, the water was boiling. What we didn't know was this was another small problem that would crop up and slow us down later. The rest stop also had mounds of yellow reflective "beads" sitting there. Looks like the road is about to get repaved.
After jawwing with a TxDOT guy who pulled up for lunch we got back on the road, heading through Eden, Vick, Wall and into San Angelo.
My knowledge of Texas gets sparser and sparser the farther you get from the San Antonio/Austin area. So before we left, I'd compiled a list of things to see via roadsideamerica.com, the first of which, was...
...the Mermaid of the Conchos. In the heart of downtown San Angelo, next to the Museum of Art, on the Concho, is this statue. A little piece of Art in a river in the the West Texas Plains. There were other things, but nothing this beautiful and "standalone."
We continued on, via Carlsbad, Water Valley, and into Broome
Broome, TX (360 degree panorama, 7724x480 JPeg, 2.11MB)
We entered Sterling City. If it had been a Sunday morning, we would have stopped into the City Cafe, and gotten a $1 stack of pancakes as big as hubcaps. I'd known about this plavce for YEARS, but sadly, the one time I went through, it was Monday, and quickly getting into the early afternoon.
Outside of Sterling City, we began noticing things off in the distance that looked like gigantic power lines, but we soon realized it wasn't just a power line, it was aSPACE STATION! wind generator! My god those things are huge.
We pulled up to a rest area near one...I was hungry, wanted a picture, and at the same time, the truck was getting a bit warm. We decided to give it a bit of a rest, and opened up the truck hood to let it cool down. The water was REALLY rumbling now...AND IT WAS SPEWING OUT OF ONE OF THE TUBES! In droves! We checked the water in the overflow tank, and there was still plenty. One of the new hoses dad had put in had, over the drive, loosened up.
I pulled out my trusty electric screwdriver, and rolled a Natural 1, completing failing to tighten the darned thing. Thankfully, a friendly Texan pulled up with a Monster Screwdriver, and we got the hose tightened up. We had some extra water in the back, and refilled the overflow tank JUST IN CASE, and limped into Big Spring, where we got a Big Ass Screwdriver. Between Sterling City and Big Spring, the truck didn't leak anything, and as far as I know, is doing just fine as of right now, so I think the rest of the hoses are good.
We took the time to take the break we didn't get when the tube gave us problems, and looked around. This place had the WIERDEST dumpster I'd ever seen. Sure it was a dumpster...but it had all these really strange painted on markings. I wasn't sure if I should put trash in it, or worship it....
With the current crisis over, we entered Lamesa. And almost immediately, my playing with the Sidekick all day killed its battery. It was just GONE. Attempts to keep it powered using my laptop USB port failed miserably, and eventually it just stopped booting at all. All the twittering and "realtime" picture uploads stopped at that point. :(
There were still things to see, though, and the camera was going like gangbusters. It could take pictures. Of silly things. Such as this.
WELCOME TO LAMESA PUNY MEATLINGS!
We continued our way through Texas, through Arvana and O'Donnell, home of...
...Dan Blocker, aka TV's Hoss Cartright of Bonanza.
Onwards and upwards, we went. We saw Tahoka eleven miles before we go there. So totally flat it was now that we deep into the panhandle. Near Tahoka, we saw a monster dustdevil form up, and it stuck around, crossing the trucks path. We had all the windows down, and at 70 MPH, the wind was just bowing like heck...till we hit the diust devil. Suddenly the wind COMPLETELY stopped...only to hit us even HARDER than before before settling down to normal.
We entered Lubbock in the later afternoon, about 5 or 6, looking for the big Buddy Holly statue. We were running a bit late, not too bad, but a bit more than we'd expected, so when we couldn't find it, we simply gave up and headed out. We also gave the truck its first full fill up since we got to Austin to see Dean, some 600 miles ago.
We switched roadways, off of US 87 (the last of the San Antonio highways I'd see) onto US 84, heading into New Mexico, through Shallowwater, Roundup, and Anton.
We were deep into ranches and farms as this point, and every town began looking the same. Somewhat older, simple, one big water tower, huge grain silos at each town with rail service to take their stuff and ship it out.
We got our first taste of Big Frickin' Cattleranches, though, in Bainer. As we drove by, there were a few grain silos, but a huge huge huge catle pen for shipping cattle via railroads. Oddly enough, we saw NO ONE in the town. No cars, no people, just grain silos and cows. So we decided the town was obviously overrun by robots. But were so efficiently running the place that no one cared. We were getting punchy, I think. :D
Or maybe we were 18 miles above the earth and the thin air was getting to us, we're not sure.
More grain silos, more water towers, we ploughed on through Littlefield, Sudan and Muleshoe. Accoring to Roadside America, the largest pair of mule shoes is somewere in there. I didn't see them. :/
We pulled off from US 84 down FM 1760 towards the New MExico State Line. Cause...well...I'm a map nut. And a border nut. And along the Texas/New Mexico border here there's a road going into Texico/Farwell. So we made a beeline for it.
New Mexico on the left, Texas on the right. 6PM on the left, 7PM on the right.
New Mexico on the left, Texas on the right. 6PM on the left, 7PM on the right.
Yes, we're roadgeeks. And mapgeeks. Help Us.
We stopped for a bit in Texico, finding the (closed) Welcome Center and plugging in the Sidekick to let everyone know we were alright. We didn't stay long enough for it to hold much of a charge and it was dead in about an hour again. One quick fight with some fire ants, and an unusual amount of flies (we're talkign Amityville number of flies here) we headed towards Albuquerque.
The going was a lot slower than we had anticipated. The speed limits were really slow, and truck speed limits slower. With no where to really pass, and long stretches where we were trapped behind trucks, we fell far far behind our schedule. But the scenery was still beautiful. Storms had formed to our northeast, and we could see lightning 70 miles away.
We made our way across the plains, into desert, into Clovis, Gallaher, Grier, St, Vrain, and Melrose.
Much like the towns on US 84 in Texas, these were all older towns, smaller, same water tower and grain silos...and the road went on and on....
By the time we hit Fort Sumner, sun had pretty much set, my last picture being an interesting cloud I planned to use in a sky shot for AWFW. The trip to Santa Rosa was mostly uneventful. We played with the radio, getting WOAI out of San Antonio for a bit, and watching thunderstorms form up around us, yet far enough away to not be a threat. Storms are beautiful, and watching the ,roll in has always fascinated me.
From Santa Rosa, we hit 40, aiming for Albuquerque, but when we hit Moriarty, we knew we were in for some trouble. When mom and Emily packed, they placed the tarp loosely around some of the more delicate stuff. A storm was coming up between us and Albuquerque, and while the clothes were progtected, the other boxes weren't. I pulled over, and we locked down the tarp with some old fasteners I'd had from the move down from Pennsylvania, and bungee cords we had. We also made it downright painful to try and steal anything, so we could leave our stuff in the bed. It was all for naught, though, since it didn't rain a white after we locked everything down.
We kept going on 40, watching the faint glow of Las Vegas and Santa Fe to our north warm up the sky to our north, and Albuquerque to our west. Through Edgewood, Barton, Zamora and Tijeras and finally Albuquerque at about 11 PM. 16 hours of driving, and a state away. We slept good that night.
The truck was packed before I woke up, Emily isn't one to sit around and wait. We had a small breakfast with the folks, and got ready for the trip.
Before I left, I washed my hands in the downstairs bathroom and noticed in the mirror one of mom's craft wreaths. It'd been there for a while, but it struck me as a Bad Thing, not so much for me (or for the wreath itself), but for all of us. What do you think?
We packed up some sodas, mom gave us a few sandwiches and we moved out into the truck. Emily would be driving this stretch while I got some sleep/pictures. We said our goodbyes, and while we were having some parting words, Emily took off, thinking we were done.
OOPS. :D
(I called them back, finished up.)
We left thirty minutes late, mostly because of me being really slow, but we hit the road...and suddenly, we had an unexpected detour. In Boerne, we pulled off down FM 1376. I'd known that Emily wanted to hit Luckenbach to see if our license plates had been put up yet. The side trip was nice, though. Instead of leaving the Hill Country on a freeway, zipping by at 70MPH, I got to see it at a leisurely 45MPH, down a mostly empty road.
We got into Luckenbach bright and early before any crowds had shown up, and the caretakers were milling about the old post office. We asked them if they'd put up our plates yet, but they hadn't. When we come back, we'll check for them again. I hope those plates are right next to each other, and stay together a good long while. :)
We left Luckenbach noting that good ole' Hondo was wearing black. We'll miss you, too, Hondo.
The trip was pretty uneventful, through the Hill Country. Emily drove, I took pics, as it would be for about 99% of the trip. I kept myself etertained twittering like mad and playing around on the Sidekick, which would get me in trouble later. We followed RM 1376 through Cain City, then US 290 to Fredericksburg, passing the most Northwestern Point I'd Ever Ridden My Bike (US 290/US87 Fork), up US 87 to Cherry Spring, Loyal Valley, Hedwig's Hill, Mason, to Camp San Saba.
We stopped off at Camp San Saba because I'd believed it was the ghost town of an old spanish for (For San Saba, in fact). Problem was - it wasn't it. Instead there was just an old graveyard and an empty lot with a historical marker saying that it was settled in the 1860s, not the 1600s/1700s, like I'd imagined. Still, it was a neat historical place, someplace I'd never been to before, and the first of many sights I'd never seen before.
Camp San Saba, also marked out something very important - we were nt only out of the Hill Country, where I'd spent most of my life exploring, but in totally uncharted territory for me. I knew places and things out here, but had never EVER seen them in person. It was an exciting voyage into the unknown for me. :)
We continued up US 87, through Brady (the geographical center of Texas - I wanted to see the EXACT center, but it was way off course, and we were already a bit late, something that would catch up with us later)...
...Whiteland, and Melvin.
In Melvin, we pulled over at a reststop to stretch our legs a bit. We each had a sandwhich and it was here that I first really noticed we were out of the hill country and into the Texas Plains. Flatter'n'flat out here. I'd heard a rumbling noise coming from the truck as well, and began to get worried that the truck's muffler had fallen off again, but that noise was the radiator! It was bubbling furiously. It hadn't overheated, or even gotten too too hot, but it'd been so hot for so long, the water was boiling. What we didn't know was this was another small problem that would crop up and slow us down later. The rest stop also had mounds of yellow reflective "beads" sitting there. Looks like the road is about to get repaved.
After jawwing with a TxDOT guy who pulled up for lunch we got back on the road, heading through Eden, Vick, Wall and into San Angelo.
My knowledge of Texas gets sparser and sparser the farther you get from the San Antonio/Austin area. So before we left, I'd compiled a list of things to see via roadsideamerica.com, the first of which, was...
...the Mermaid of the Conchos. In the heart of downtown San Angelo, next to the Museum of Art, on the Concho, is this statue. A little piece of Art in a river in the the West Texas Plains. There were other things, but nothing this beautiful and "standalone."
We continued on, via Carlsbad, Water Valley, and into Broome
Broome, TX (360 degree panorama, 7724x480 JPeg, 2.11MB)
We entered Sterling City. If it had been a Sunday morning, we would have stopped into the City Cafe, and gotten a $1 stack of pancakes as big as hubcaps. I'd known about this plavce for YEARS, but sadly, the one time I went through, it was Monday, and quickly getting into the early afternoon.
Outside of Sterling City, we began noticing things off in the distance that looked like gigantic power lines, but we soon realized it wasn't just a power line, it was a
We pulled up to a rest area near one...I was hungry, wanted a picture, and at the same time, the truck was getting a bit warm. We decided to give it a bit of a rest, and opened up the truck hood to let it cool down. The water was REALLY rumbling now...AND IT WAS SPEWING OUT OF ONE OF THE TUBES! In droves! We checked the water in the overflow tank, and there was still plenty. One of the new hoses dad had put in had, over the drive, loosened up.
I pulled out my trusty electric screwdriver, and rolled a Natural 1, completing failing to tighten the darned thing. Thankfully, a friendly Texan pulled up with a Monster Screwdriver, and we got the hose tightened up. We had some extra water in the back, and refilled the overflow tank JUST IN CASE, and limped into Big Spring, where we got a Big Ass Screwdriver. Between Sterling City and Big Spring, the truck didn't leak anything, and as far as I know, is doing just fine as of right now, so I think the rest of the hoses are good.
We took the time to take the break we didn't get when the tube gave us problems, and looked around. This place had the WIERDEST dumpster I'd ever seen. Sure it was a dumpster...but it had all these really strange painted on markings. I wasn't sure if I should put trash in it, or worship it....
With the current crisis over, we entered Lamesa. And almost immediately, my playing with the Sidekick all day killed its battery. It was just GONE. Attempts to keep it powered using my laptop USB port failed miserably, and eventually it just stopped booting at all. All the twittering and "realtime" picture uploads stopped at that point. :(
There were still things to see, though, and the camera was going like gangbusters. It could take pictures. Of silly things. Such as this.
WELCOME TO LAMESA PUNY MEATLINGS!
We continued our way through Texas, through Arvana and O'Donnell, home of...
...Dan Blocker, aka TV's Hoss Cartright of Bonanza.
Onwards and upwards, we went. We saw Tahoka eleven miles before we go there. So totally flat it was now that we deep into the panhandle. Near Tahoka, we saw a monster dustdevil form up, and it stuck around, crossing the trucks path. We had all the windows down, and at 70 MPH, the wind was just bowing like heck...till we hit the diust devil. Suddenly the wind COMPLETELY stopped...only to hit us even HARDER than before before settling down to normal.
We entered Lubbock in the later afternoon, about 5 or 6, looking for the big Buddy Holly statue. We were running a bit late, not too bad, but a bit more than we'd expected, so when we couldn't find it, we simply gave up and headed out. We also gave the truck its first full fill up since we got to Austin to see Dean, some 600 miles ago.
We switched roadways, off of US 87 (the last of the San Antonio highways I'd see) onto US 84, heading into New Mexico, through Shallowwater, Roundup, and Anton.
We were deep into ranches and farms as this point, and every town began looking the same. Somewhat older, simple, one big water tower, huge grain silos at each town with rail service to take their stuff and ship it out.
We got our first taste of Big Frickin' Cattleranches, though, in Bainer. As we drove by, there were a few grain silos, but a huge huge huge catle pen for shipping cattle via railroads. Oddly enough, we saw NO ONE in the town. No cars, no people, just grain silos and cows. So we decided the town was obviously overrun by robots. But were so efficiently running the place that no one cared. We were getting punchy, I think. :D
Or maybe we were 18 miles above the earth and the thin air was getting to us, we're not sure.
More grain silos, more water towers, we ploughed on through Littlefield, Sudan and Muleshoe. Accoring to Roadside America, the largest pair of mule shoes is somewere in there. I didn't see them. :/
We pulled off from US 84 down FM 1760 towards the New MExico State Line. Cause...well...I'm a map nut. And a border nut. And along the Texas/New Mexico border here there's a road going into Texico/Farwell. So we made a beeline for it.
New Mexico on the left, Texas on the right. 6PM on the left, 7PM on the right.
New Mexico on the left, Texas on the right. 6PM on the left, 7PM on the right.
Yes, we're roadgeeks. And mapgeeks. Help Us.
We stopped for a bit in Texico, finding the (closed) Welcome Center and plugging in the Sidekick to let everyone know we were alright. We didn't stay long enough for it to hold much of a charge and it was dead in about an hour again. One quick fight with some fire ants, and an unusual amount of flies (we're talkign Amityville number of flies here) we headed towards Albuquerque.
The going was a lot slower than we had anticipated. The speed limits were really slow, and truck speed limits slower. With no where to really pass, and long stretches where we were trapped behind trucks, we fell far far behind our schedule. But the scenery was still beautiful. Storms had formed to our northeast, and we could see lightning 70 miles away.
We made our way across the plains, into desert, into Clovis, Gallaher, Grier, St, Vrain, and Melrose.
Much like the towns on US 84 in Texas, these were all older towns, smaller, same water tower and grain silos...and the road went on and on....
By the time we hit Fort Sumner, sun had pretty much set, my last picture being an interesting cloud I planned to use in a sky shot for AWFW. The trip to Santa Rosa was mostly uneventful. We played with the radio, getting WOAI out of San Antonio for a bit, and watching thunderstorms form up around us, yet far enough away to not be a threat. Storms are beautiful, and watching the ,roll in has always fascinated me.
From Santa Rosa, we hit 40, aiming for Albuquerque, but when we hit Moriarty, we knew we were in for some trouble. When mom and Emily packed, they placed the tarp loosely around some of the more delicate stuff. A storm was coming up between us and Albuquerque, and while the clothes were progtected, the other boxes weren't. I pulled over, and we locked down the tarp with some old fasteners I'd had from the move down from Pennsylvania, and bungee cords we had. We also made it downright painful to try and steal anything, so we could leave our stuff in the bed. It was all for naught, though, since it didn't rain a white after we locked everything down.
We kept going on 40, watching the faint glow of Las Vegas and Santa Fe to our north warm up the sky to our north, and Albuquerque to our west. Through Edgewood, Barton, Zamora and Tijeras and finally Albuquerque at about 11 PM. 16 hours of driving, and a state away. We slept good that night.
