Lost Texas – Day 3

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Somewhere south of Del Rio, Texas

As I’ve stated in the previous two days of this blog post covering our trip to Texas, this isn’t being written and posted until February 2023. What’s worse, there are no notes to work from and the itinerary from that time ended up being more of a suggestion of locations instead of fixed destinations. In addition to the lack of notes, these images arrive from the land of laziness: I shot these with my Samsung S6 instead of taking the DSLR I would have normally used. Like I said, I was being lazy.

So, from out of the fog, memories are dragged from wherever they can be found and splashed upon the page. As I posted yesterday, I believe we stayed in Del Rio, and the timing between images seems to support that, but if anyone in the future looking at this image of a foggy road can offer me a more precise placing of where we were, I’m open to adjusting these details.

Briskets and Beer Smokehouse in Laredo, Texas

Fortunately, there are moments that are captured, such as this one when we were stopping for breakfast in Laredo, Texas. How do I know we are in Laredo? It says so on the side of the building, over there where it’s stenciled saying, “Best Little Smokehouse in Laredo.” Should you be wondering about barbecue for breakfast, we are in Texas, where that’s all they eat.

Caroline Wise hitchhiking on Highway 83 out of Laredo, Texas

Picked up the convict, who was apparently on the lam and in need of a ride to the Guitar Center in McAllen further south. She seemed reasonable, so I said sure until I heard she was looking for a ukulele. Who plays the ukulele these days? She could only have been a serial killer.

South Padre Island, Texas

Here we are at South Padre Island on the Gulf of Mexico in southern Texas, with not a barbecue joint in sight.

South Padre Island, Texas

Looks to me like the road has already ended.

John Wise and Caroline Wise on South Padre Island, Texas

Do I look stressed out to you? It’s been a little more than a year since I started a virtual reality company.  While I knew it would eat my time, I never really considered what we would have to give up as I wanted to build something in that space for the previous 20 years, and with the opportunity finally available, I jumped on it. The consequence of that decision was that Caroline and I rarely traveled, and when we did, I don’t think my heart was 100% in it. Of course, we were together, and I couldn’t be anywhere else but with her when we were out on the road, but it’s like these photos taken with a phone; I couldn’t be bothered with investing myself deeply in these trips as I did prior and since shutting the company down.

South Padre Island, Texas

Someone lost their dinosaur, and now its plastic corpse lays discarded, awaiting a poor turtle to come eat it and commit suicide on this unhealthy snack.

On the way to Corpus Christi, Texas

We avoided the highway as long as we could while trying to find our way east toward Corpus Christi, where we’d be staying the night.

On the way to Corpus Christi, Texas

While we know we ate at some random crab-shack-kind-of-place in Corpus Christi, the photo was a bunch of meh, like most of our food photos. We have no idea where it was precisely, and I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Being out on the road with Caroline is often the best part of traveling, and so it was with this excursion into southern Texas. I can’t remember thinking that anything we were seeing was so compelling to inspire a return visit. Tomorrow, we leave for parts north as we are going to cut right through the middle of this massive state.

Lost Texas – Day 2

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

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.

Lost Texas – Day 1

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Caroline Wise and John Wise on the road in Arizona

Talk about being lazy. It is 2023, mid-February, when I finally get around to dealing with posting what details might be discovered regarding this trip Caroline and I took to Texas about a year after I started a new company that was eating all of my time and leaving precious few moments for us to share. The trip did not go according to plan, but that will be divulged as the post continues. There won’t be many photos as not only did I shoot less than 200 images over the seven days we were on the road, I foolishly didn’t even take my DSLR and instead shot these photos on a Samsung S6 smartphone. There may have been notes, as Caroline can be seen in a photo from this day (not worth publishing), in which she can be seen taking notes, but where that notebook is might be lost in time. We do still have the original itinerary but there’s no telling how well we stuck to it as there were no reservations made in advance. According to that travel outline, we went as far as Las Cruces, New Mexico, but the next day, I took a photo of the motel we stayed at, and it showed up in Deming, New Mexico.

Pinnacle Peak Steakhouse RIP

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Caroline Wise at Pinnacle Peak Patio Steak House in Scottsdale, Arizona

This is the last time we will ever eat at Pinnacle Peak Patio in Scottsdale, Arizona. The steakhouse opened in 1957, and on June 28, 2015, it will serve its last Cowboy steak. While we never ate here frequently, it was nice knowing that places like this still survived.

John Wise at Pinnacle Peak Patio Steak House in Scottsdale, Arizona

Overhead are some of the thousands of ties that had been cut off the patrons who dared enter this place wearing formal attire. Other than prices going up over the years, nothing really changed, and the menu remained consistent.

Pinnacle Peak Patio Steak House in Scottsdale, Arizona

This is the 24-ounce Cowboy steak, a Porterhouse. Served with whole wheat bread, cowboy beans, and some corn on the cob, this was as fancy as it got here. A little more of the flavor of the Old West is disappearing.

The Wagon Yard

JWise Photo of the Day

The Wagon Yard Saloon on Bell Road in Phoenix, Arizona

We’ve been moving from one loft to another today and aren’t feeling like cooking at home nor are we interested in going somewhere nice so, after avoiding this place for so long, we decided this was the night we’d finally dip into the Wagon Yard Saloon. We’d been enticed a few times by their sign out front for breakfast starting at $2.99 but it was the .55 cent wings we were after tonight. Besides the shock of pulling up with our Prius being the only non-pickup truck parked here, we actually fell in love with this old iconic joint.

Tal National Live at The MIM

JWise Photo of the Day

Tal National Live at The MIM in Phoenix, Arizona

Caroline and I were at The Musical Instrument Museum this evening to see Tal National. Not only do we feel great about supporting the international artists who have the opportunity to pass through Phoenix, but we also hope we are encouraging The MIM to bring us more artists from around the world. During the last song, the band invited a bunch of people on stage to dance with them and while Caroline enthusiastically joined them, I failed in capturing a halfway decent photo.