Roadside America

Monumental

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So, for episode 2 of “Driving Ms. Sally” in late April I’ll be driving down to Santa Fe instead of flying. Because after we get back to Santa Fe from the Hammond visit, I’m leaving Sally there and I’m going to continue driving around the country visiting folks. On the trip down I want to visit Monument Valley. Sally mentioned that she wanted to go there and see it someday, so I’m going to reconnoiter the place.

I have driven through the area twice recently and I actually visited it a long time ago. Back in 1989 Donna & me were deciding whether to quit our jobs in Florham Park and move to a sister plant in South Carolina or just stay in NJ and think about buying a house there. To help clear our heads and think on it we took a couple weeks of vacation and flew into Phoenix, AZ, rented a car and circumnavigated the state. One of the stops was Monument Valley. We arrived late afternoon and they were no longer running the Jeep tours, so we thought we were out of luck, but things were a bit more laid back then. The guy behind the counter handed us a map and said, “Just stay on the roads and be back here before 6 to leave, because they lock the gate.” We got back in our little red 1989 Ford Escort and bounced along on several miles of dirt road. That would never happen now.

Road Trip Day 5 – Paris to Amarillo

A 400-mile, 7 hour driving day that included an actual Dunkin’ store, a Cracker Barrel lunch, a mildly disappointing Buc-ees visit, an almost hotel mix-up and four bits of Roadside America.

Back in May of 2023 on Donna’s and my trip to the Napier’s Hometown we were in the Holiday Inn Express across the street from the Dunkin’ in the travel center. When I went in, I walked back out, because there was only one person behind the counter and too many people in line. This time it was me and Sally staying across the street in a Home2 Suites and I stayed because there were two employees behind the counter and no one in there but me. Turns out I probably should have left, they didn’t get the order right, regular means 3 cream – 3 sugar and all I got was 1 of each.

Cracker Barrel didn’t disappoint even though they didn’t have the Pot Roast dinner I wanted; the Sunday Special was chicken pot pie that put Swanson’s to shame. Sally’s trout was also excellent, but I had to take her word for it because she refused to share, (truth be told, she did offer and I declined.)

Turns out this Buc-ees did not have a car wash (aww..) and there were none of the free circle stickers either (crap!), but the rest was terribly weird as advertised.

I almost did the same thing I did once before on a previous trip with an overnight stay in a Holiday Inn property. While trying to follow the somewhat confusing frontage road situations in Texas I pulled into a Holiday Inn, and before I would have embarrassed myself, I checked the reservation on my phone and realized I was in the Holiday Inn lot and I needed to be on the other side of I-40 Business in the Holiday Inn Express.

We stopped at the Texas Best Smokehouse Travel Center in Henrietta, TX to photograph the Dinosaur Parade there. Next was a Quanah Parker Trail Arrow in the town of Quanah, TX. I was here before with Donna and even though I can find no reference to it the blog, I can say with all assurance that we were here on a previous trip because I remember visiting the museum that is in the same parking lot.

After checking in to the hotel, taking an hour to settle in, we went for a semi-long walk around the hotel area, we hopped in the car and grabbed a couple more Roadside America sites near Amarillo that I had never been to before, the giant Tex Randall Statue in Canyon, TX 20 miles south and the Giant Legs of Amarillo on the way back to the hotel.

Road Trip Day 2 – San Angelo to Houston

Yesterday evening while refining today’s route I found a bit of Roadside America in the the town of Lampasas. There was a park that offered a a spot for a short leg stretch walk and it included an art sculpture garden that included a old rusty pickup truck with a giant catfish in the bed. The giant catfish did not disappoint and there several other art pieces that were worth a few minutes of contemplation too.

About 2/3rds of the way into the day’s drive, we stopped for lunch. My first plan from the night before was for us to get some pizza or some Chinese food in the town of Temple. But I changed when I saw a sign for Zaxby’s just as we entered the town of Temple. I always enjoyed their chicken fingers while Donna and I lived South Carolina. Sally was agreeable to go there, so we plugged the restaurant into Google maps. I should have called an audible to find another spot because when we found it the parking lot was practically empty a 12:30 PM on a Saturday. It was disappointing on practically every level, the cole slaw was as I good as I remembered it and the frozen lemonade was pretty good too.

We had passed a drive through car wash on the way to lunch and thought it would be nice to wash the dirt off the car that we gathered on the snow-covered drive yesterday. While looking for maybe a different car wash that was more along our way out of town, I found out there was a Buc-ee’s in Temple. Originally the Buc-ee’s visit was slated for on the way home when we spent the night in Amarillo. Even though this would add several extra miles to the drive to Houston, who could refuse?

Heading Home

Day one of our 2-day return trip back to Klamath Falls. On the way up to Granite Falls we took the shorter quicker route through Washington by taking I-90 West and WA203 north, but on the way home today we abandoned that short quick version because the surface of I-90 was awful. I swear the concrete contractor took a few shortcuts because it is deteriorating badly. Of course the amount of traffic it receives is probably a whole heck of a lot more than the further north US2 too. From Monroe we used US2 this morning heading east and it was a great little drive until it got a little later in the morning and we got to the fake Bavarian town of Leavenworth, WA. Even after getting past Leavenworth, the traffic was fairly steady.

After the drive up, and now halfway back, we both think that this will be the last time we come up to visit over the 4th of July. We are going back to visiting in May when there are a lot fewer folks on the roads and practically zero RVs.

On the way up 3 days ago we crossed the Columbia river via a different bridge. We usually cross on US197 right out of The Dalles where the Holiday Inn Express is, but this time we used US97, about 20 miles further east. On the way up the hill in Washington we noticed a sign for a Stonehenge memorial and thought that maybe we should stop in on the way back. So we did.

Here is the interesting origin story of the monument.

Intermittent Rain Showers


hover over the picture for a different view of this wind turbine farm

The whole of today’s drive was like the second half of yesterday’s drive, we were traveling it for first time in the opposite direction. And just like yesterday’s second half everything was new to us and beautiful to behold even while passing through intermittent rain showers for most of the day.

The drive along I-70 in Utah is one of, no make that the best Interstate we have ever driven. Even after the red rocks transition into brown the scenery is still fantastic. The ups and downs created a twisty highway for most of it that can be fun at the posted 60MPH or even better 70MPH. 🙂

And US-50 in Nevada to as far as Ely is no slouch either. We are now convinced that this is the route to take between Santa Fe and Klamath Falls even if it does cost us an extra day, hotel room, tank of gas and a couple meals out.

See my Instagram post from today for a couple other scenes from the drive.

36,000 Beautiful Views

To avoid the long slog on the rough surfaced, 18-wheeler dense I-40 and crazy dense traffic of Las Vegas, our usual route home, we choose to go north and west first from Santa Fe. This way we will do the quieter less traffic route of Green River, UT to Ely, NV to Carson City, NV to home. But Santa Fe all the way to Green River is 421 miles and 8 hours of driving, so we broke it into 2 smaller segments. Because we were going to leave Santa Fe after lunch, Wednesday’s leg was a shorter 150 mile, three hour drive making today’s drive a 250 miles five hour affair.

Along with the better driving conditions we got a couple of other bonuses out of it. We were going to pass through Cortez, Colorado again so that we might be able to eat at The Farm Bistro that was closed on the way east because it was Saturday and boy was it worth it, the food was fantastic, the portion size was perfect and it was priced very reasonably. We also got a chance at one last Roadside America photo op. At the Mud Creek Hogan Trading Post the previous owner stuck about a dozen telephone poles fitted with giant arrowheads and feather fletchings into the ground at an angle (see above.)

Come to think of it, make it four bonuses. We had never traveled any of the first leg and the scenery was beautiful. Then on the second leg, where we had been on the roads before, this time we were driving in the opposite direction so everything was new to us and startling beautiful as well.

Not long after leaving last night’s stop in Pagosa Springs the Mini flew by 36,000 miles on the odometer.

Four More Arrows In Our Quiver

Back ten days ago we passed up on looking for the Quanah Parker Arrow in Seminole, TX on our way east because of traffic. Well, today on our way west, we sought it out. The photos below came from there; the arrow, the plaque at the base (some have this, some don’t) and a shot of the arrow’s fletching through the sunroof.

The very next town 17 miles along the route, Seagraves, TX, also had an arrow located right outside the town’s museum. These next photos are from there; the arrow, a smaller replica inside and a portrait of Chief Quanah Parker himself on a wall inside by a local artist. We must have spent an hour inside the museum. It was a treasure trove of cool bits, it was almost being inside the dusty attics of the town and surrounding county folk’s homes. Military memorabilia from several past wars, high school band and dance team uniforms, school yearbooks, football team photos, random family photos (some marked, other not so much), school art projects and some really nice art from local artists.

Twenty miles further up the road was the town of Brownfield and Donna located an arrow outside the the county museum. We didn’t go inside here like we did in Seagraves. It was about lunch time so we found a local restaurant that served Cajun food and on the way there we spotted a second arrow in town. So after eating we doubled back to take a picture of it too.

Donna found another arrow in the town of Littlefield about 50 miles further north, but we never made it. About halfway up in the town of Levelland we could see the dark gray skies of a thunderstorm up ahead. After looking at the radar we opted to head west and kind of run through the storm width instead driving straight through the length of it. Maybe next time we should just wait that kind of storm out. The distance between Levelland and Morton is about 25 miles and it poured almost the entire way, sometimes the rain drops were hitting the car sounded like hail. Fortunately it wasn’t hail because if it was our crack in the windshield might have gotten a lot bigger. In Morton the rain slowed way down and we stopped a quick stop to get couple sodas and a snack before heading back out on the road.

This is where it got interesting. We were going to head straight north on TX214 towards Muleshoe, but at the north end of town there was a raging river across the highway. We stopped and watched several large vehicles crash through the running water and decided the Mini would never make it. Our next option was to go due west on TX114 and turn north on TX596. We got a mile down 596 before having to turn around because of high water on the road. U-turn back to TX 144 and continue west towards New Mexico. Three miles or so down that road and this time there was a small lake over the road, so we back tracked to Morton. The river across the road north was still raging. We couldn’t go back east because that meant driving back through the storm so our only option was to try going south. This time we got lucky.

Seven miles south of Morton on TX214 we came to TX125 heading west and pulled over for a second to formulate a plan. About that time an 18-wheel tanker truck passed by going west, I pulled out and followed. By this time it was just sprinkling, so I stayed back a hundred yards or so and watched for him to hit the water first. And as it turned out there were only a few places that had enough water on the side of the road to make us move over to get by. About halfway to the New Mexico border the truck pulled into an oil field so we were on our own, that was fine because by that time and place, the road the rest of the way to Clovis was mostly dry.