Texas

The trip was going pretty well until we got to Texas. Phoenix the day after New Years was waking up but manageable. And it was an easy drive down through Tucson. We stayed overnight in Willcox, Arizona. That was almost a slice out of time. We walked down a back road to Apple Annie’s Orchard Shop for a piece of pie, ate at a little mom-and-pop steakhouse, and slept in an old Holiday Inn Express that seemed as though it hadn’t changed in twenty years.

Then it was east again. We spent a happy few hours in Deming, New Mexico, including lunch at a little neighborhood cafe.

And then we hit El Paso. The town evidently is squeezed by the border to the south and mountains and huge Fort Bliss to the north, so it is mostly strung out east-to-west. But the highways and flyovers and ramps to and from, plus highway construction meaning ramps are closed… Well, we saw a lot more of El Paso than we had intended. We missed at least two turns that took us several miles before we could correct, and we missed four or five minor turns. We were glad to finally get to the motel.

Our El Paso motel had a large number of military men. We talked to a Navy man who said he was stationed in San Diego but was in El Paso “supporting the border.” We didn’t ask him what that meant. (The next day we listened to a three-part podcast about the border on Radio Lab as we drove. It was well worth the listen.)

We woke in the morning to a cold rain. The emptiness of west Texas can be pretty bleak, and in a January rain it is probably at its bleakest. But we made it to Midland without incident.

Midland is in the Permian Basin, which we learned supplies one-fifth of all oil and gas produced in this country. It seems like everyone is either directly or indirectly associated with the industry.

We saw a couple of drilling rigs, many well donkeys, and several flares where they burn off the escaping gas. Trucks were hauling all sorts of machinery. And pickups everywhere. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that half the pickup trucks registered in the US have Texas license plates.

But we had an excellent supper and slept well.

We woke to clear skies and temperatures in the 30s. West Texas looked less bleak in the bright sun. We headed north through the red-dirt fields and passed a wind turbine under construction. I read somewhere that Texas has more wind turbines than any other state.

We’re up in the panhandle tonight, in Amarillo, staying in the same motel in which we took refuge from a blizzard in February, 2015. The motel is showing its age a little – aren’t we all? – and more motels have been built around it, so this should be a quiet night. The forecast calls for an overnight low of 27º but no precipitation.