The rain had mostly stopped by morning, though the sky was overcast. After further considerable time on the internet, we concluded that a motorhome rental would not be the best option from Dallas, as we haven’t been able to find the size of motorcaravan we want, the fuel consumption will be very high and, most importantly, it isn’t possible to use the have any running water in the van, because of the risk of freezing. With the added risk of driving a large vehicle up into the mountains at this time of the year, it just doesn’t seem worth it. So, we will need to extend or renew the car rental in Dallas tomorrow.
With a long drive ahead of us to Denton, to meet up with our friend and Philip’s ex-colleague, Mariano, we had to use the interstate highways 49 and 20 today, in order to cover the distance. Texas is quite big, really. Actually, it’s about three times the area of the UK, with just over a third of the population, most of it urbanised. There’s not a lot of interest in rural Texas, so we didn’t miss much with the fast travel through. It was a pleasant enough drive initially - many trees, mostly green as the deciduous trees are now bare. Later, it became more bare and featureless. With maps & information from the very good Visitors' Centre as we entered the State, we were able to find our way round Dallas and north to Denton to a motel with relative ease. We never watched enough TV to find out who shot JR, but it seems that his successors are alive and well in Dallas and just as determined to kick ass. It’s a big brash city that clearly wants to make a statement. Passing under and through its amazing series of intertwined elevated roads and motorways was like driving through a concrete forest though at least the Texans have made an attempt to soften the concrete look by painting all their motorway structures in patterns of soft cream, red and green. The driving, however, is about as aggressive as it gets. If you hesitate, you’re likely to be run off the road, from either side. There’s also a problem with some of the road design, especially freeway on-ramps, which are very short and often not signed until the very last minute – OK for locals perhaps, but not for visitors.
Having made phone contact with Mariano and arranged a time to meet at our motel, we went to post a parcel. We were congratulating ourselves on finding our way to the post office without difficulty, when we received a call from our friend, 20 minutes before the appointed time, wondering if we had got lost. These Texans are pushy! It was good to see Mariano and his two oldest children, Kanika and Micah, who are at university in Denton but who just remembered visiting us in the UK and playing with Cecilia and Kirsten many years ago. We followed them in a long, hairy drive (in the middle of the rush hour) to an excellent TexMex restaurant, then back most of the way to a nice quiet place for coffee and cakes, with a lot of catching up and reminiscing. Thanks to Kanika and Micah for recommending the venues. As we made our way back to the motel, the temperature had dropped to 4 deg C.
Tuesday 17th November
Drove to Dallas Fort Worth International airport, on a fine, cold morning, to sort out the car rental. The traffic was positively civilised, as it was after the rush hour. The airport covers about three times the area of Heathrow, but is mostly open grassland. Unable to understand the English used in the signs, we went right round the airport twice before finding the rental car centre. As we could not extend the existing rental car agreement except at exorbitant cost, we settled on a very expensive 1-day hire to allow us to arrange a further long-term hire through an agency, from Lubbock. Along Interstate 20, the landscape became increasingly scrubby, with more stunted trees and small cacti, in red earth. The terrain was mostly flat, but with occasional escarpments, some with covered with huge wind turbine “farms”. Lubbock promotes itself as the wind turbine capital of the USA and there are estimated to be over 5000 wind turbines in the area. These massive new energy machines contrasted with the large number of small nodding donkeys, which they are destined to replace.
As we approached Lubbock, cotton fields reappeared. Apparently, Lubbock was built on the cotton trade.
Supersized cotton bales - everything in Texas just has to be the biggest
However, its main claim to fame is likely to be as the birthplace of Buddy Holly. At a small cafe, well off the beaten track south of Lubbock, the walls were covered with photographs, dating back 25-30 years, of young members of many branches of the Holly family, praised for their sporting prowess. There was no mention of Buddy, though, so perhaps they weren’t directly related.
In Lubbock, we found a small, basic, independent motel, a rarity up to now. Like the motel in Memphis, it was owned by a family from the Indian subcontinent, who had moved to the States via the UK. Memphis and Lubbock did not seem to be the most likely places for people to pitch up as immigrants and start running motels. Our nosiness was rewarded with rather vague answers and it seemed politic not to pursue the point.
Wednesday 18th November
Lubbock initially appeared to be a typical small town (the term “city” is used here for everything from New York to a small rural village with a population well under 1000). However, its extensive motorway network, ring road and numerous vast shopping plazas suggested something different. Like us, you may never have heard of it, but this is a city of 200,000. We drove to Lubbock airport to take out a new rental agreement on our existing car. While having it serviced, we did a little shopping and Philip had the best chocolate milkshake since his childhood in New Zealand. After lunch we set off through more cotton fields on flat plains. Further west, we saw several very large herds of cows (each 500-1000 head) penned up, presumably waiting to be shipped by road or rail. The terrain here was not completely flat - some dips, some escarpments. It became progressively dryer, with more tussock and some yuccas.We also encountered occasional tumbleweed, being blown across the road on the stiff, cool breeze.
After crossing into New Mexico, we stopped to look at the grave of Billy the Kid, who was shot by Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, while on the run, in 1881.
Nearby, there was also an impressive national monument to the Navajo and Mercelato Apache Indians, who were 'coralled' at Bosque Redondo by American forces, led by Kit Carson, in the mid 1800s. Many of the men were hunted and killed, while large numbers of men, women and children died in captivity, leading to huge loss of life.
As darkness fell, there was another dramatic sunset, then we drove in dark on the busy but freeflowing route 40 into Moriarty. It seemed that we were climbing fairly significantly along the route. When we stopped for the night in a very basic chain motel, at a busy and noisy truck stop, the temperature was well below zero.
For some time we have been seeing signs identifying sections of the roads we have been travelling on as the "Historic Route 66". As most will know from the song, this was the first unified interstate route from Chicago to Los Angeles, completed in the 1940s. It became redundant when the new major interstate freeways were opened. We have certainly been getting our kicks on Route 66.
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