Yukon to ABQ

We left Yukon, OK, at 7.10 this morning, slightly off plan. The woman behind the desk went to school with Garth Brooks. (Later in the day we passed through the hometown of Roger Miller—King of the Road—but I forget the name of the town. We did 519 miles in about 8 hours, arriving here at 2.15 pm local time, having gained (lost?)an hour. We are now in Mountain Time, same as Green Valley.

Western Oklahoma is quite different from Eastern, OK, more of what I had imagined: flatter emptier, bigger sky. We saw a number of very large windmills just west of Oklahoma City. I haven’t mentioned the wind we have experienced the past several days, but it has been quite impressive—30-40 mph, with higher gusts. Steering the Jeep took considerable concentration and both hands; it was as if the car was pulling to the left all the time.

Oklahoma City is at 1230 feet; Amarillo is at 3676. Between them is lots of flat terrain, a good deal of it cultivated. We saw extensive cotton fields for many miles. At the edges of the fields are giant bales of cotton, the size of tractor trailers. Again, lots of big sky and many places where there is absolutely nothing except fields all the way to the horizon. In places, though, cattle graze; and we saw one very large feedlot.

Fourteen miles east of Amarillo we saw snow on the ground (yesterday it was 72!) We were at some altitude, however, so it makes sense. Beyond Amarillo, 69 miles east of Tucumcari we entered an entirely different landscape. Now we saw mesas, desert vegetation, including cholla cactus and creosote bushes, washes and dirt. We were coming down off a plateau and the weather warmed quickly. We were excited to be in the desert, in the West we had been looking forward to.

Near the road we saw a small herd of antelope. Totally unexpected, but right there.

As we traveled on, we began to see snow covered mountains to the north and the terrain around us continued desert-like, but changing in altitude. At one point, about 60 miles east of Albuquerque we were at 7200 feet and it was around freezing. There was snow again on the ground and evidence of its being plowed, so there must have been several inches accumulation—probably he same storm that hit Colorado and Kansas so hard.

We got into ABQ early and went to the Pueblo Cultural Center. Very educational and lots of nice art to buy as well as museum displays of art and history. Then we went to the old plaza of ABQ, a smaller version of the one in Santa Fe. There are some nice galleries, though not nearly as upscale as Santa Fe. Dinner in a local Mexican restaurant.

Tomorrow we should get to Green Valley in midafternoon. It is cold and windy here in Albuquerque—5900 feet high, about—but tomorrow we head due south to Las Cruces and then west to Tucson.

Pictures

Some pictures from Missouti and Oklahoma

Rocks in Missouri; Rt 66 marker and mailbox; dust shrouded sun in Oklahoma.

Marion, IL to Yukon, OK

We stayed in the Hampton Inn in Marion, IL, last night, and implemented our travel plan, i.e., getting on the road by 7 am so we can drive in the light. Driving at night in new places is neither fun nor educational. Unfortunately, it being the Sunday after Thanksgiving, many others were plundering the breakfast buffet at 6.15. Perhaps the plan will work better tomorrow. We did get on the road at 7, however, and made 629 miles in about 10-1/2 hours.

As we crossed the Mississippi at St. Louis, we both remarked that it is smaller there than the Patuxent River near our Maryland place. Out of St. Louis, we were on I-44, which largely parallels Route 66 of song and tv fame. We enjoyed the signs noting where Historic Route 66 crossed and paralleled 66. We actually drove a little bit on 66 when we got off for gasoline.

Southern Missouri was hilly, covered with trees, well endowed with rocky outcroppings and cliffs. It is in the northern Ozarks and quite pretty. The multiple browns and leafless forests revealed the details of the landscape. It was cloudy and rainy, but still good to look at.

We saw many signs/billboards advertising vineyards. Jane recalled reading that at some point in the past, Missouri was the leading wine producing state in the country. We saw St. James Winery
www.StJamesWinery.com
And Meramec Vineyards
www.MeramecVineyards.com
The vineyards were right along I-44 and quite extensive. Some wineries had those nice, modern, woody tasting buildings. For more on Missouri wines, see http://www.missouriwine.org/

We also saw, for several hundred miles, billboards advertising tours of the world’s or the country’s largest barrel maker. Cartoon characters on the billboards (what ever happened to regulations limiting billboards on Interstates?) made it seem quite jolly to take such a tour. I figured that if you’re going to make barrels anyway—presumably for the wineries—why not see if you could get people to pay you to see you do it? Possibly applicable to any number of activities, I guess . . . .

Oklahoma was not at all what I had imagined. It is rolling countryside with lots of cattle and neat (not always) ranches spread prettily about. Many trees are sprinkled liberally across the brown fields, some in groves, others individuals. The land is parklike, many fields covered with now-brown grass and no undergrowth. One theory we concocted is that the cattle eat the underbrush. Whatever the fact, these ranches look like well-tended golf courses. The browns of the grasses on the fields are varied, from winter wheat and winter Bermuda such as we are used to, to intense, darker browns, one of which Jane called burnt orange. Some areas, particularly west of Tulsa, are more heavily forested, with undergrowth intact, and with many streams. Occasionally there are flat-floored, shallow valleys covered with either brown grasses or some emerald green vegetation.

We saw a beautiful sunset over Oklahoma City. We are staying in Yukon, hometown of Garth Brooks, in a Hampton Inn just off Garth Brooks Blvd.!!! Yukon is just west of Oklahoma City.

We had a very nice Italian meal at Primo’s, just across the parking lot from our hotel.

Two other observations: we had much more traffic than one would expect in this part of the world, except that it is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and so lots of traffic is to be expected. I-44 in Oklahoma is a toll road and they are not used to handling the crowds that arrived today at their toll booths. Thankfully the speed limit is 75, so we made decent time.

And finally, it was very windy today, with temperatures in the low 70s. The car was buffeted most of the day. And there was much dust in the air.

We took some pictures from the window of our car; I’ll put some up one of these days.

Good visit with old (and young) friends

It was great spending time with Gary (Neilsson) and family in Marion, Illinois on Saturday. Arthur was very patient - he does not know all of these folks, since they were my friends from college. Jane's mom, Ella Mae, has faded since I last saw her - she has early stage Alzheimers, according to Judy Kay. Joe Main looks just the same, even though he claims to have passed the big 50. Amanda looks so much like her mother, Jane, and is a delightful young woman. It was fun to meet her long-time boyfriend, Tony. They make a very handsome and accomplished couple. Amanda will be in Clinton, IA next semester doing an internship. Michael looks very different - no more baby face, now a handsome young man. He will be driving in February. Jenny didn't make it home because she is so busy with Law Review at SMU.

It is a joy for me to get together with their family - like being with family, for me. It is bittersweet, however, reminding me how much I miss Jane. She would be so proud of her kids - Gary has done a wonderful job.

Thanksgiving Interlude

We had Thanksgiving dinner at Milo’s, a nice restaurant here in Champaign. Present were Jane’s mom, Helen; Jim and Judy, Jane’s brother and sister, and their spouses; Judy’s son Thomas; Jane’s great aunt Bertha, and Jane and I. The food was excellent. The restaurant was full, the tables turning over as on any other day. I never thought of people going out for Thanksgiving until quite recently. It was quite nice, and no dishes to wash.

Observation on commercial tv—you see the same commercials again and again, Jane noted, even during a single movie. Presumably, this is because it would be too expensive to do new ones all the time. But what does that mean? To hypnotize us? Perhaps we don’t even notice them consciously—but would we listen to the same joke or story again and again in real life? Do the advertisers know something about subliminal messaging? Is it just the price we pay or free tv?

On Friday we had lunch in the Tea Room in Paxton with Jane's friend Kathy. She has become an excellent photographer and is now producing beautiful framed prints and notecards of flowers and scenes of nature. It made me want to get back to photography. Perhaps in Green Valley.

Midwest Landscape

Here are a few pictures around Champaign, just north of town. The town is Paxton, where we had lunch in the Tea Room with Jane's friend Kathy. The others are a grain elevator and the farmland that surrounds the road.

Into the West - Days 1 & 2

To Arizona
November 2005

We left Solomons on Sunday, November 20 after packing and re-packing the car a couple of times. We discovered that we couldn’t take everything we had planned to take, such as golf clubs and a spare vacuum cleaner, without overloading the Jeep and blocking our rear view. So we did triage and will cope.

We had a nice lunch with Kate and Mark at the Cheesecake Factory in Richmond and set off for Lewisburg, WV, our first overnight. It was a beautiful day for a drive. The low November sun angled in through the mostly-bare trees making the forests look wonderful. The bare trees focused our attention on the still-green grass and landscape features hidden during the summer by the monotone green of leaves. I noticed many more cattle grazing in the rolling fields than in the summer; perhaps they were inside or under trees during the summer because of the heat. And the rolling or sometimes rugged hills were much more noticeable than in the summer. It was quite a different ride from the summer.

The trees were now individuals, branching upwards from bole to branch, from branch to twig, each etched against the blue sky. Shadows and light showed the steep bones and swells of the fields in detailed anatomy.

Lewisburg, West Virginia is in the mountains just west of the Virginia line. This old town has many art and craft galleries, a 19th century downtown, hills and old homes. It is near The Greenbrier, a very posh resort, and I think the resort provides much of the affluent buyers who support the galleries. The Christmas decorations were up and we went through several galleries. Most striking were the paintings of Lyn Boggess who works with paint and a trowel, or probably several trowels; the gallery owner said his favorite is a 5” concrete trowel, however. The paintings are impasto, but from an even modest distance they are almost photographic. I asked the gallery owner if he used projected photos, but she said he is a plein air painter, working outside from nature. Very impressive work. Here is his website: http://www.lynnboggess.com/ The gallery is Cooper Gallery, Lewisburg, West Virginia.

We had dinner in the General Lewis Inn (http://www.generallewisinn.com/). The food was ok but the building is nifty.

On Monday, November 21, we set out from the Hampton Inn at about 8 and very soon saw ahead of us an overturned tractor-trailer blocking the whole westbound side of I-64. A car ahead of us turned through the median and we, in our “Trail Rated”© Jeep, followed. (OK, he was in a Corolla, but even so . . . .). We got off the Interstate and stopped in a gas station/general store right out of the ‘40s to inquire about how to get to Beckley on other roads. We followed the instructions we got up and down narrow, windy roads along the New River gorge. We thought what a difference from the Interstates we generally travel. It was quite beautiful, with steep hill/mountainsides dropping off to the river, and narrow roads through old towns right next to the river and railroad tracks. I was often surprised to see quite modern houses and towns along this road, though people clearly live all over this area. There were old houses and shacks as well, of course, making one think of the people who settled here before the interstates and electricity and telephones. The detour was something we would not have chosen on this particular trip, more miles and slow going, but really worth both.

We saw another overturned truck in Charleston, WV. Even the interstates are quite curved through the mountains of West Virginia. Signs warn trucks to stay at 55 mph around many curves, but the seldom do. I tried to keep clear of trucks in those mountains, not wanting to have one topple over on us. It’s interesting to do going downhill at 65 or 70 mph in 3rd gear.

After the mountains, the interstates the rest of the way to Champaign were lacking in adventure, though the landscape of browns and slanted light from the low-riding sun was more interesting than most summer views.