Monday, March 30, 2015

In Abilene, Sweet Abilene

You would think after a nine hour road trip from Santa Fe, NM to Abilene, TX. I would have have not much to say since the scenery looks pretty much like what I have in these 4 pictures. The road could easily be straight as an arrow, I think they add curves just to keep the driver awake. As I have mentioned before, highway driving is fast out west; if the limit says 55, it's 70 and if it says 75, you better be going 80. In Los Angeles they go fast once they have room to move because so much time is spent in traffic congestion. In Texas they go fast to cover the hundreds of miles between places. We stopped for gas, food, or to stretch our legs three times and once we had to turn around and go back to make the only highway change we needed all day. It was 'Eleanor's fault', the car's GPS which is mostly a help (especially within cities) but can give some very screwy directions too. It was only a 20 minute addition to our day, which is certainly not severe. We double checked every step of the way with a road atlas after that. So what did we see? 
-flat, flat plains
-red plowed earth
-wisps of cotton in the fields from last season's harvest
-rows of irrigation
-endless numbers of cattle in feed lots
-acres of windmills
-mesquite and short pine trees
-more tumbleweeds
-less dust than New Mexico
-real cowboys at McDonalds (hat, belt and bowed legs)
-countless (I DO mean countless) Cudd Energy trucks as we got closer to Abilene which means fracking has been involved, which makes me nervous
-one dead possum on the road
-tiny deep purple and yellow flowers growing low to the ground in ditches along the highway
-massive clumps of prickly pear cactus








So here we are, smack dab in the middle of Texas, over 3000 miles and two time zones away from home and all is good.

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