It may not be like yesterday, so maybe it feels like somewhere in the past year, but though I find some familiarity with this scene, I cannot place where I took this photo. Days later, after I prepped these photos, it dawned on me that once we get past El Paso, Texas, this size of population wouldn’t be on our route, and so, knowing we left Deming, New Mexico, this morning and tracing the map, it would appear to me that we opted to take the Woodrow Bean Transmountain Drive out of Vinton, Texas, in order to bypass the toilet-mint city of El Paso. Based on Google Streetview, it appears that my guess is correct, but I could be wrong, too.

The reason I could be wrong and the memory foggy is that this post is not being assembled until February 2023, eight years after our trip to Texas. Since the details are lost to time, the images and what I’m able to tease out of this journey will have to suffice as the parts that might trigger what memories we have buried deep in our heads. Why even perform this type of backfill? Because this is where we go to revisit the places we’ve been and re-encounter things we’ve done.

Hello, from somewhere in Texas on a cloudy day. While the landscape is reminiscent of areas of Arizona, I’m including this as we don’t have many photos from this day where we did an extraordinary amount of driving, as in about 550 miles or 9 hours, according to Google.

We’ve arrived in the town that Judge Roy Bean allegedly founded in 1882, called Langtry, Texas. This old building was the Jersey Lilly Saloon that Bean built for a famous English actress he never met. He only ever saw a drawing of her in a magazine; her name was Lillie Langtry. I found one story that attributes the name of the town to her, while a more reputable source says the town was named after George Langtry, who helped build the nearby railroad lines. By the way, Roy Bean wasn’t a real judge and was, in fact, a murderer who became a justice of the peace in the area, though he knew nothing of the law. Court was held right here in his saloon. Bean died in March 1903, ten months before Lillie Langtry passed through town.

In the background is an old Southern Pacific Railroad bridge passing over a canyon that runs to the Eagles Nest Creek and the Rio Grande River just outside of Langtry.

This view is from Highway 90 crossing the Pecos River south of Langtry, Texas

The same bridge, as seen from the Pecos River boat ramp, with Caroline Wise standing shin-deep in the water on her quest to step into all of America’s riverways.

Based on a number of factors (including conjecture), we believe we stayed in Del Rio, Texas, for the night.