We left real early with just enough light to see, so the first hour was spent driving south during the golden hour. This gifted us a sky with all the beauty of the southwest landscape illuminated by the predawn sun. Unfortunately, the previous day’s weather gifted us hard-packed snow and ice with all the danger of sliding off into a ditch along the side of US285 South.
After leaving the city proper on the way to Clines Corner we were traveling gingerly at about 40 MPH on a road with a speed limit of 75, passing a couple of vehicles stuck in the snow off the side of the road. Past Clines Corner the roads intermittently became clear or snow packed making the speed a lot higher overall until we got 20 miles north of Roswell when the road became all snow/ice covered, so it was back to a steady 40 MPH creep.
We did get lucky on our direction of travel too because some miles south of Ramon, NM the north bound lane was blocked by a semi that got stuck making a turn onto US285 North. There were a couple dozen cars stuck behind it, with three State Troper cars sitting there in the middle of the median, doing who knows what. About 5 miles later there was a fire truck angled across both of the north bound lanes with probably 100 cars backed up behind him. It wasn’t until just now as I write this in the San Angelo hotel I realized what the fire truck was probably doing, it was just past a rest area and a pass thru to our side of the divided highway, so as to make it easier for a wrecker to get to the semi and move it off the road.
There was a detour on the route Google was sending us to circle around Roswell and I missed a sign for a detour turn necessitating a quick U-turn. This was the first of three with me at the wheel. After Roswell, the rest of trip was clear sailing, except for me driving right by where we supposed to turn south in Plains on Texas 214. This one was because I always keep the voice muted because it interrupts the music playing. Secondarily, I also keep Android Auto showing what music is playing full screen. After that incident it was suggested to me by my passenger to at least keep the map visible. Because we were long past the correct route Google had me U-turn (#2) go back part way towards Plains and head south on some random Farm to Market road. U-turn number three happened after passing one of the turns along the zig-zagy correction route. I may have had the map full screen, but mute was still. I was suggested to me by my passenger that perhaps it would be good to unmute madam Google too.
Without further incident we made it to our late lunch meeting at KD’s Bar-B-Q in Midlands with one of Donna’s older brothers who lives about 50 miles west, in Monahans. The BBQ there is in fact quite terrific all three of us piled more food on our trays that a normal person, if 30 years younger than us could eat, but that was okay because they had readily available to-go boxes for us to take the leftovers with us. I’m not sure I want to have my leftover ribs for breakfast in the morning, so maybe there should be a more sensible sized lunch tomorrow allowing us to eat that stuff at tomorrow’s Homewood Suites outside Houston.