Through East Texas to Carlsbad Caverns and a detour thru oil fields - 477 miles
This travel entry does revolve around energy and fossil fuels, but I dare say we saw some of the largest wind farms we've ever seen. The wind farm we saw stretched across valley floor and hills that must have extended at least 20 miles if not more. Now, we don't go touring the country rating wind farms and their size, but the one we saw off of Interstate 20 impressed us. And, according to the American Wind Energy Association, the wind turbine farm that we saw outside of Abiline, TX FPL Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center is listed as the largest wind project operator in the world. So Texas rules this roost! My goodness, learn something new every day.
Once out of the Abiline area, we were approached by an oil prospector named Chris Smith (yes seriously as generic as it sounds who joked that he'd received that name from the witness protection bureau) getting gas in Stanton, TX. He described the boon happening now with the new discovery of a shale gas find pretty close to Odessa, TX. It's called the Cline Shale. Chris initially approached us because he had no idea that there were RV rental services and we surprised him pulling into the gas station in our Cruise America RV and a phone number emblazoned on the side. He said he wanted to contact them because housing in the area was an unnerving outcome from the boon, where workers rented out every last hotel room and there was a need for more employees. He said he and some friends needed to consider alternatives like short-term RV rentals. The way Chris was talking, it felt like, minus the bad hat and shirt he was wearing, we were being sold on prospecting by a modern day cowboy, except, minus the mystique. No notorious cowboy hiding behind his back. He said the shale find was going to rival Middle East oil.
After our first contact with a prospector, we drove for almost 80 miles through an area just below Lubbock on Rt 137 that was continuously peppered with unflappable oil drills. The oil drills always look to me like robots with their arms rolling in bolted steel shoulder sockets. Rt 180 heading toward New Mexico was expansive fields of fallow fields.
We drove through Hobbs and we found ourselves crossed into New Mexico. The time changed from Central to Mountain time and we got an hour of our lives back. We made it to the Carlsbad RV Park and prepared a late dinner. We chatted about what we might expect the next day at Carlsbad Caverns.
The next morning, after a vicious wind storm threatened to keep me up all night shaking the RV like a fly-fisher might shake a pole, I met one of the RV site keepers Irene. It was my mother's birthday and my mom's name was Irene, so I found that to be a beautiful coincidence. The caverns are located only 16 miles away and after that wind storm I wondered if we'd see tumbleweed and satellite dishes tossed everywhere along the road. A few of the RVs satellite dishes were flipped. We talked to a Texas farmer RVing with his teenage daughters. He lost his farm in the 2007 big storm that had horribly impacted the area (mentioned back at the Glen Rose Dinosaur Valley State Park as the storm that devastated Site #3). His name was Gus. He shared how he rebuilt a new farm. Marilyn asked him about the large fallow fields that we saw along Rt. 180 and he shared a little more of his Texas knowledge about growing seasons. He loves the great outdoors. Guy's daughters attend Texas colleges. One of them got a picture taken with a famous football player from the New Orleans Saints that he showed off. Her other sister came out wearing 3-inch heals on gravel. I've tried that a few times, but it seemed to really stand out to us given that they were camping and heading to the caverns that day too.
Carlsbad Caverns blew us away. We were spellbound looking at stalagmites and stalactites. Difficult conditions for photography. If you walk into the cavern, which we did, you're really in for a great walk! Although the bat flight out of the corridors of the caverns doesn't happen at this time of year, we couldn't have been disappointed for long. We walked down the natural entrance into Devils Spring venturing further into Devils Den. The oscillating waves of trail made for a spectacular understanding of various angles of the immensely resonant corridor. The entire walk brought us through the Boneyard, the big room's hall of giants and caveman junction. Don't fall into the bottomless pit if you go! Spectacular and created drop by drop with rainwater and sulfide-rich waters merging and creating sulfuric acid that dissolved the limestone and the shifting of mountains.
It's really worth a trip there to learn about how they formed and see the caverns first hand! When we took the elevator out of the bowels of the caverns, we emerged at the surface to find an unmoistened landscape smudged by air dipped in the sands of the rock formations weathering the hills expeditiously as if it had tired of geological time and was giving us a glimpse of an unusual heavy workload. Walking outside only for a few minutes made my eyes dry. We decided we'd head back to the RV park and get ready for dinner. We ate at a very homey Americana-themed restaurant, withe traditional homestead shelving and wood tables only separated occasionally by a wooden pole holding up the ceiling.
Our discussions led us to talk about how we love woodwork and my intentions to take some woodworking classes. Justin suggested that these would interest him too. His father used to build furniture. I shared stories about people who I knew who used to build furniture and I wondered if they were still into it. It can be so rewarding to start and finish a piece of furniture the way you want to design it. Marilyn always appreciated beautiful hardwood, but never spent much time wanting to build. We talked about different ways to decorate and what we each considered Americana-themed. When you drive off the main roads of America, you see the real soul of this country not determined in button-downed offices, but made with hands that love coming up with recognizable unique designs that celebrate handcrafted pride and sensibility. We saw a lot of handcraft sense and sensibility on the roads heading west.
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