Dreams, Moments, Travels
How my wife developed an ear for bluegrass is slightly beyond me, only slightly, as I’ve always known she has a soft spot for regional music forms, and with the banjo having such a unique sound, it’s no wonder we are here at the Musical Instrument Museum in North Phoenix to take in Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn.
Just another random sunset from the Valley of the Sun here in Phoenix, Arizona.
Tampico Steak for breakfast, Mr. Wise? Of course, only the best breakfast for me. I could have opted for eggs and some other shite, but come on, we’re in Socorro, and the El Camino Family Restaurant may not be around forever, so I need to have my favorite dish every time we stop. As a matter of fact, I believe I could eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for at least a few consecutive days.
Sending this one via satellite, as stated over the previous six days; this post is coming at you from the future, as in February 2023, because back in 2015, your’s truly were distracted by all manner of things and failed to blog about many things, this being just one of those things. The photo is from the Very Large Array in Datil, New Mexico.
We are in Pie Town, New Mexico, and it just so happens to be one of those ultra-rare occasions where something is open in Pie Town. Coffee, pie, and ice cream don’t get better than here in Pie Town, well, unless you are at the Thunderbird Restaurant at Mt. Carmel Junction in southern Utah for some “Ho-Made” pie because who doesn’t like some authentic Ho-Made pie?
Yay, we survived Texas, the flooding, fiber shops, too much barbecue, green chilies, pie, and unfocused John, who should have brought his DSLR and taken notes so things wouldn’t simply be lost.
After getting back to Phoenix, there was no rest for the wicked, as we had a concert to attend at the Musical Instrument Museum. Niyaz was playing, and we certainly didn’t want to miss this opportunity to see them.
Now that I’m finally done with this post, it’s sad, tragic even, that this trip lay fallow for all these years. It was a big mistake to allow it to fall between the cracks and its memories to largely be lost, but such is life for most people. The problem is, I never wanted to be “most people,” and so I suffered a certain amount of regret that I allowed work to consume most everything over the years I felt I was following my dreams. Dreams should be multi-dimensional, just like the virtual reality I was attempting to create. Don’t forget to live while you work and love someone else. I don’t mean to imply things weren’t great, but I should have been managing my private life better during these years.
…Yesterday I closed my post with Caroline having plans for pushing us in this direction towards Eagle Nest, New Mexico. Things will become clear soon enough.
Once more, I’m letting the reader know that these posts are arriving eight years after the travels were had. It wasn’t until February 2023 that I finally tried tackling the chore. As life and work often get in the way of things, so it was back in 2015, well, 2014 through mid-2017, for that matter. I feel that it’s better for these images to find a place on the blog, though the narrative is thin due to us not having notes to accompany the images.
Our primary objective is now to go home, but we are not interested in the most direct route, though south is the general direction we need to travel, so things are working out.
Oh, what’s that? It’s the Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park, which sure feels like a strange bit of architecture out here.
That memorial would have been the turn-off had we intended to visit Taos today, but that’s not where we’re headed.
This is what I was alluding to regarding Caroline’s plans for how our altered path could play out. We are about 50 miles south of our motel in the small town of Mora, where the Mora Valley Spinning Mill is located and is open. Caroline is not holding that yarn for the sake of the photo; it is but one small part of what we’ll leave with.
Sixty-five miles west of Mora is the small town of Española and the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center, where they sell yarn and other fiber-arts-related stuff Caroline’s paws must fondle.
While Caroline busies herself lost in Yarnland, just over there next to Dreamland, I took up the designated “I’m not interested” section of the store, using my time of isolated sulking while yarn shopping to share this image of my newest handmade socks made from two shades of green yarn acquired at the Fiber Factory in Mesa, Arizona.
Here we are in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a quick visit. We’ve already had lunch at Tia Sophia’s, where they serve up New Mexican cuisine, and are now on our way to the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi.
The inside of the cathedral is not a very ornate affair, but that doesn’t matter; we still enjoy the ambiance.
After we did a quick walkthrough of the Palace of the Governors, we strolled around the corner to visit the New Mexico History Museum. These “finger-woven socks” made of yucca fiber weren’t the only things on exhibit, but as they are hand-woven, you can be certain that Caroline was enchanted by them; I suppose I should be happy that my wife uses soft wool to make my socks because those appear a bit rough on the edges.
Somewhere south of Albuquerque.
The next stop was at the World Famous El Camino Family Restaurant, famous because we’ve posted about it so frequently. Tampico steak, Mr. Wise? Well, of course. Where we stayed is of no concern as after eating at our favorite New Mexican diner, we could sleep on a bed of nails. Guess where we’ll be having breakfast tomorrow?
Things only got worse overnight regarding the flooding in this area on the borders between Oklahoma and Texas. We were told there was no chance of continuing north and that the Red River was unpassable to the south. Originally, our goal had been to pass through Medicine Lodge, Kansas, because I liked the name and then continue north to Great Bend, also in Kansas, which would allow us to connect lines on our map of the U.S. Our only way forward today was to try and go west, the operative word was “try” because we were warned that we may or may not find a way due to water spilling everywhere.
(I should reiterate that this post and the ones around it are all being written in February 2023. I didn’t post much of anything from 2014 through 2017 because I was preoccupied to distraction with the operations of my company TimefireVR.)
While the water that was crossing the road in the photo above this one didn’t look too deep, nobody else came along, so we couldn’t judge what the conditions were and instead turned around. We encountered a lot of flooded fields as Caroline tried to navigate us through the maze of rural roads.
At times, the water collecting appeared to be a flooded stream or small river bed, but as it crossed roads, we deferred with extra caution and just kept hunting for a way westward.
Thanks go to this magic turtle that offered us a way out by pointing the way. Though he was camera shy he stated that he’s always eschewed the limelight for helping humans on their path and stay safe.
The middle of the Texas Panhandle was high and dry; we started to try and breathe easily.
We passed into New Mexico between Texline, Texas, and Clayton, New Mexico, with the rain seemingly closing in on us. With this, our Kansas, Colorado, and Utah part of the loop was struck from the plan and now we were limping back home. Our destination this evening was still about 150 miles away over in Eagle Nest, New Mexico. Caroline had plans…
Let’s get this disclaimer thing out of the way right here: this post and the entire series of Texas posts of this trip did not get published until February 2023 because they were nearly lost in time. No notes exist; well, at least they’ve not been found if they do exist. The photos are of middling quality because they were shot on my phone. So, that’s that.
We are on North Shoreline Boulevard in Corpus Christi for sunrise. Nothing else is known about the start of this day.
I can only wish that somehow I’d already learned that the impressions made on these days would mean a great deal to me as I’ve grown older. There’s a tragedy about the lack of foresight under which we humans operate, and we fail to apprise one another of the better lessons from which we could benefit. Photography and writing are far too important to our older selves to lay fallow and neglected until it’s too late to drag them forward.
It’s been countless times I’ve watched my wife standing at the edge of the ocean, just looking out into it all. I don’t know where she is during those moments of being lost in the sea; maybe I hope she’s nowhere and simply drifting in the contemplative space of something like a meditation. What I do know is that I love bringing her to these locations for us to find whatever we end up taking with us.
We’re out in the middle of nothing, a place that looks a lot like we’re not anywhere. The closest big city is Houston, about 100 miles away, while in the opposite direction to the west is San Antonio, about the same distance; 150 miles behind us in the South is Corpus Christi, and it’s about the same distance as Waco. Highway 77 is a two-lane affair. Schulenberg, where we are stopping for lunch at the Oakridge Smokehouse Restaurant, is a tiny dot on the map with a population of only about 2,600, and yet the parking lot to this joint is packed. How is it possible that this out-of-the-way roadside BBQ is better than anything I’ve ever had in Phoenix with a population of over 3 million?
It’s flat out this way. With Dallas, Texas, more than 200 miles away, I wonder how tall a building would have to be there for me to see it from here. Catch some air here; this next part is not here due to time travel; it’s not that flat in Texas. I told you that I’m writing this in 2023, and this will be my first reference to ChatGPT and Microsoft’s implementation of it with Bing, chat specifically. I asked it how tall a building would have to be for me to see it from 200 miles away; ChatGPT (a.k.a. Sydney) supplied me with this formula: x = √ (a² – 2ad + d² + r²) – r, and then it did the math for me telling the building would have to be at least 1.26 miles tall or more than 6,650 feet. Now I know.
This is Rosebud, and I’m pretty certain that it will never be the metaphor for someone’s distant, lost youth as it was portrayed with a red sleigh in the famous movie that shares its title with the name of this Texas town.
Believe it or not, we’ve been out on the road for nearly 8 hours by this time. No, we are not pulling over to relax in the World’s Largest Cedar Rocker in Lipan, Texas; nope, we are here for what’s just below.
If you want to think there’s anything else to eat in Texas, you’d be wrong, and once again, we are at some out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere joint, this time called Natty Flat Smokehouse.
Maybe these dark skies should have been offering us clues, but we just kept driving north.
Our stop here at the Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells, Texas, will be the last image of the day. Shortly after this, we ran into the rain, and not just any rain. This was the kind of heavy downpour that made us pull over more than once when driving was becoming too sketchy. As soon as the rain would relent even a little, we’d pull back onto the road and drive on; we were hoping to make it to Oklahoma City. We never did and instead ended up in Lawton, Oklahoma. Exhausted from the stress of driving in the torrential rains, we grabbed a room at Motel 6 and learned how lucky we were as it sounded like we had been the last ones to cross the Texas and Oklahoma state line, which crosses the Red River, which was now flooding over the road we had just come up. As far as going to Oklahoma City, that wasn’t going to happen, with the roads to the north unpassable due to the accumulation of high water. This was a change in plans we’d never anticipated.