Driving Home New Mexico to Amarillo, Amarillo to Waco.

Leaving Colorado was hard. We had another long drive in front of us, and I was a little worried about driving through New Mexico. I had heard that they were stopping cars at the state line to enforce COVID quarantine.

That was not the case:

That is one beautiful state.

This is near the Ghost Ranch, around Abiqui.

The colors are dumbfounding

Everywhere you look it is beautiful.

New Mexico was the second state that have a "You are leaving" sign. The other was Kansas

Home again.

We did go to the Big Texan

It is a whole "western cowtown"

Complete with EMS on site for heart attacks.

We stayed in this cute little house in the Wolflin neighborhood in Amarillo. It was quite nice

Then we drove the next day to Waco, where we stayed in this very wonderful farmhouse.

They had sheep

Then we drove home,

One more post coming with final thoughts.

Comments

Nebraska is a BIG state. Especially crosswise and on two lane roads

I think I mentioned below that we bought a Rand McNally road atlas for this trip. This is where it pays off. Doreen has been tracing our route with a yellow highlighter (I will post Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas later) so we can remember where we were. Here is the route through Nebraska: You may note that it ends in Chadron. That is where we ran out of daylight. We would not have run out of daylight had it not been for COVID19 and the Oglala Lakota. More on that later. But on out way from Kansas, we went through the geographical center of the lower 48 US states. See: It is just outside of Lebanon, Nebraska. and yes, that is a cedar tree. We took a self portrait: Then a nice lady asked if we wanted her to take our photo. We said, "Sure!" This is what we got: Of course, I took her photo, too. But not before taking a couple of photos of myself, first. (Thanks, Matt!) I am not sure I mentioned this below, but on the first leg of the trip, we listened to Charles Portis's book T...

Home again, home again.

It's always good to be home. We have never taken such a road trip before, and certainly never with a dog. That was an experience. She loved the long hikes in the mountains, didn't care for the car rides, especially the long one. We, too, experienced new things. We listened to a lot of books on tape (well, Audible), trying to match the words to the Landscape. So we started with True Grit by Charles Portis, set mostly in the Oklahoma Territory. One of my favorite books of all times, and it was read by Donna Tart. ( The Goldfinch , etc). Perfect book for the start of the trip, from Houston to Bartlesville. On the next two legs of the trip, to Hutchinson, Kansas and then up to Keystone, South Dakota, we listed to My Antonia by Will Cather. (pronounced, we learned, as an-tone-EEE-ah). A wonderful book for driving through Nebraska. And we were on the Willa Cather highway while doing so. As we drove into Wyoming, we listened to Rising from the Plains , by John McPhee. The story o...

Custer State Park, where we discovered that Lulu likes hiking but hates small log bridges.

Neither of us slept great on Sunday night, but we were up and ready to go with the dawn on Monday morning. I took with us some of my World Famous Roasted Coffee (this batch from Guatemala) hand grinded it and made us two moka pots to get started. A great way to start the day. It is really pretty here at the cabin. and, of course, there is this: One can look at that as an engineering marvel, but not sure what else. But we soon got to the trail head, and after a little confusion (which is very common for me), we started off. We were, indeed, there. The trail was very easy, except for the 16 creek crossings, most of which were easy for us, hard for The Dog. Lulu does not like log crossings. She doesn't like water, either, but she likes it more than log crossings. She would frequently just walk through the creek, up to her chest, to avoid the bridge. It was a great, fun, walk, though. Lots of mountain medows. And rock bluffs. We stopped occasionally to take a nice sip of cold water. T...

The Year of Months

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