Doin' Ninety!

Big Springs, Texas (Cinco de Mayo, well, it was when I wrote this)

I'm crossing the USA in six hour intervals, which is about the number of hours I am willing to drive in a day. I surely hope that is enough to get me around and back in three months, given that some days I will not be moving from one place to another at all, but rather visiting or exploring where I am.

In Texas, however, one can go further in six hours than in most other places, which is a good thing because Texas is so BIG. The secondary highways I am traveling on here, are wide and flat, with very little traffic and one can go really fast. Don’t tell the Texas Rangers, but now I know that my new little Honda can do ninety or better, a speed not traveled anywhere back home in Florida, actually , a speed I have not traveled since my college days going from Ohio to Florida at Spring break when my girlfriend got a ticket for doing 100 in her Firebird somewhere in Georgia. But we were young and foolish. (Shhhhh, Grandma’s did 90 today, and I am not talking about age, WooHoo!) But even while moving along at 80 mph on the Texas byways, the view lingers, is not missed, because of the vastness of it all. I can see for miles and miles and miles from one high spot on the road. Don’t worry, I think this speed thing was a one time adventure. I’m done now.

As I travel through Texas I tried to burn the scenery into my mind, the colorful abundance of roadside wildflowers, the iron entrance gates of the ranches, the cows and the sheep grazing on the range and the barbed wire fences keeping them corralled, the profusion of tall silver windmills looking like some kind of scene out of “future world,” the gigantic vistas. I loved it all.

When I came upon a post office in the middle of nowhere, it occurred to me that a photograph from my camera couldn't’t possibly express how remote and lonely it feels out there, because you couldn't’t experience what was out of camera range, which was much more of what was in range, much much more.

I left Austin this morning. My stay and my visit were just wonderful. I wanted to live at the Lady Bird Johnson wildflower center, but there are no accommodations there, just flowers and gardens and well planned environmentally compatible water saving stone and metal buildings. It is the sort of place where you can just sit and feel peaceful and marvel at nature’s variety and colors. Ahhhhhhh!

I learned a lot about Austin history while riding a duck around the historical section of the city and while tooling around the lake a little. I am referring of course, to those metal Army style amphibious vehicles that tourists climb into for the city tour. They even let me keep the yellow plastic duck bill that I could blow into to make a loud, creepy, sarcastic quacking sound. Catches attention. Could come in handy?

A walk along Bull Creek, dinners out, cards and conversation filled another chunk of my Austin visit.

I stopped in San Angelo today and went to a place that once was a chicken farm, but now is an art center called appropriately the Chicken Farm Art Center. Chicken coops house studios and galleries of local artisans, a grain silo has become a restaurant and Bed and Breakfast, the “Inn at the Art Center”, and out buildings provide housing for the owner and artists in residence. Very cool place with stone carvers, glass blowers, painters and other crafters. It has been operating for quite a few years and vacant studios are rare. The place feels a little like a spiritual compound. I think that is because the people there are following their hearts and the dictates of their souls doing what they love, creating beautiful things, in the company of others who understand their passion. I could have stayed the night, but their are no windows in the solo bedroom and I need windows, not to mention how excruciatingly quiet it was behind those thick brick walls.

I was told by one of the Chicken Farm artists that San Angelo was the country’s largest city not on an interstate route. A claim to fame and interesting trivia.

It is easy while traveling to get caught up in the day to day, not think about yesterday or tomorrow or last year or next year. This is a good thing, because if I were to do that I could lose the magic of today. While I may think about home occasionally, it is with detachment, no worries, no concerns, just thoughts going on in my mind. Actually, my travel thoughts are unfocused, varied, light weight. Sometimes I can just relax in my own silence or get lost singing along with Johnny Cash.

Tonight marks the end of my first week on the road. It went by so fast!

At the end of each day I am tired. I want to read brochures and books and paint my impressions of something and write, organize the day’s expenses, keep a notebook of things seen and done, plan my future and think. But I am tired at the end of the day. And I don’t know weather to blame it on the traveling, age, residual fatigue or something else. I don’t know yet how, or if I should try to solve this issue. Maybe that is one of the attractions or consequences of travel, not doing things as we would if we were home, not feeling the same. I want this journey to last as long as I can. I don’t want to rush and yet I feel a pull. I want to slow down but not stop. And yet ……. Sometimes I don’t know what I want.