The Impossible Tahoe Turn and Burn, Day 8
The Impossible
Tahoe Turn & Burn is an 8 part series,
so be sure to start with Day 1
The Texas Stretch
We began our last day on the road like most of the others, up early and eating things people called breakfast but really were only truly satisfying in the sense that they filled out rumbling bellies.
On our way out of Alamogordo, bound for Texas, we noticed something strange crossing the road in the twilight of dawn, and it took a few seconds to realize that it was a coyote with a domestic cat in its mouth, wandering off to eat his prize catch, which I'm sure is tastier than the usual fare. Sad to some, I'm sure, but I love coyotes and they gotta eat too.
Our route home would first lead us through the Lincoln Memorial Forest (Google it here), our last views of windy mountain roads for the trip, bittersweet for sure, and I was soaking it all in. Just west of the NM/TX border things begin to flatten out, get brown, and the landscape changes from sprawling natural beauty to cotton farmland picketed with giant windmills churning. Although it's not nearly scenery I particularly enjoy looking at, it does hold a sort of beauty of its own.
The last town in NM that we drove through that is (maybe) worth mentioning was Roswell, NM, (Google it here), the strange town who's whole identity revolves around the kitschy 50s version of alien culture. We wondered what it must be like to be a kid growing up around that culture, even if a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek. To me, it's all kooky and not what I'm looking for when I look into what makes some place what it is. I dig into many of the small towns I travel in and through in my regular rounds across Texas and everywhere, and the nicest thing I can say about this one is that, well, at least it's unique.
Looking out across all of this bland view filled with muted tones that seamlessly blend together, anything that isn't part of it really sticks out, even at 80+ miles per hour.
Although we were ready to get to the finish line of our final 9 hour drive, we were both very much still in the mode of serendipitous exploration, so we'd stop just to see what some weird thing was, as we'd done so many times on the journey behind us. That serendipitous something really defines the way we naturally explored everything to date. One notable stop was simply a funky old chair upholstered in velvet with stripes of greens that more or less complemented the natural colors it sat within. It appeared intact whizzing past, but upon further investigation it looked to have fallen off a truck at some point, damaged beyond repair, doomed to a slow death on the side of the road in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
We propped it upright, I shot a few fotos, and like roses on the chair’s grave, we left the last of that terrible Vegas Strip weed in NM, where it's legal.
We enjoyed the calming goodness of the indica and sativa pens we'd picked up on the first night, in Durango, the entire trip, every state we'd been through, cannabis being legal. The Smoking Stick as we'd dubbed it, was as good or better than any beer, and even though you probably know how much I love beer, I find myself more often than not preferring the positive benefits of cannabis. I rarely take man-made drugs of any kind outside of the occasional necessity of antibiotics. In the past I've taken prescription medications to ease my troubled mind. I never liked any of it. But there is this plant that when consumed in various ways has what I and many consider some incredible medicinal and even recreational value and I strongly support decriminalization and even more so to end to the senseless prohibition of it. /endrant
Point being, it felt dumb to have enjoyed it in Colorado, Nevada, California, but then having to sadly trash what we had left before driving across an imaginary line into a state where lots of things are repressed by a small but very vocal minority of folks who think what they want is more important for everyone to fall in line with than ever even considering what might be a better future for us all. /endrant again, but suffice to say it was left behind, and not much of it anyway. We're certainly scofflaws the two of us, but neither have a desire to be outlaws.
We finally crossed back into TX, unceremoniously, knowing that we still have what seems like forever to drive. The towns are named Plains, Brownfield, a sign for the road to another named Whiteface - all indicative that where we are has looked and been the way that it is for as long as anyone can remember. The only real highlight is a stop at the omnipresent Allsups for the fried beef & bean burritos inside. Josh made the mistake of ordering something other than the only good thing, and it was chicken sandwich with only chicken on a grease soaked bun that had been squeezed by the guy behind the counter as he grabbed it from the hot box and put it in our bag.
You gotta stick with the classics around here.
The further east we moved along US 380, the more the aforementioned blandscape intensifies into an even flatter and more muted version, breaking for a bit through the lower end of the canyon country of the Panhandle, but right back to more of the sa. Coming back to Texas from anywhere, this is the hardest part, driving endless miles through the edges with not a whole lot to see.
It is cotton harvest time though, and there was a lot of activity surrounding that with even a couple of decent foto ops. And remember from Day 1 the foto I shared of the flock of Canadian geese in the sky, the shape of them together resembling a whale? There's a high probability that we saw the same crew again in a pond in a city park just south of where we'd seen them flying then, so we stopped to marvel at that. Beauty is everywhere, even in the most unlikely places, you just have to look for it, sometimes intently.
As the sun began to get low in the sky, we finally saw the familiar signs we'd been waiting for: Jacksboro, then Decatur, then the turn off for Boyd, where just north of we'd arrive at the Flack Farm, just in time for a righteous sunset that honestly rivaled any we'd seen in all of the wild places we'd seen over the past 8 days. A sure sign we'd done good and a blessing nonetheless.
Upon arrival, I said my hellos to Jamie and the kids, and y'all should know but if you don't the Flacks are my some of my and my daughter Sierra's closest friends, family to us. It was so good to see them all, and I know they were happy we made it home safely and full of good stories. Those stories would have to wait though, as I still had a bit of a drive to get back to my home in FTW. I quickly began unloading the truck and putting my gear into mine, somewhat haphazardly to save time.
