Homeward Bound: Today we pack up and head home. It has been a fun trip and we have seen many amazing landscapes, but it will be good to get home. Our goal is to leave by 9 am and drive to Van Horn, TX with a back up plan of the east side of El Paso. With the limited sleep last night it could be a challenge...
Just south of Silver City, NM we went by another astronomy subdivision - New Mexico Skies Astronomy Village and we pulled in to have a look about. It is another village that was started a number of years ago but has not filled up. In real estate listings it is called Butterfield Trail Estates. It is located on a flat plain, providing unobstructed horizons with mountains in the distance. The roads are gravel, but since it is right off Highway 80, you don't travel too far on gravel roads to your house - at the outside a mile or so.
One end of the subdivision has numerous homes with domes or roll-off roof observatories. There are a number of empty lots and then at the other extreme are houses mostly without any indication of telescopse. We read online that at the time the astronomers took over the subdivision, there were already a number of individuals who lived there and reportedly have some outside lighting. There is also a roadside rest area at the highway turnoff with street lights, but they appear to be pointing down and totally hooded. So unless you are in their direct line of sight, they probably don't add to sky brightness.
It looks like a really nice subdivision with large lots and maintained properties and NMAV is one of the more active astronomy communities around. We decided it would be interesting to see what the prices area and what the covenants are, etc. By visiting the real estate site which handles the properties we did find out there were also "commercial properties" for sale - which was disconcerting and we felt more investigation will be necessary.
We drove on to Deming where we picked up I-10 and headed to Las Cruces. When we got to El Paso, we found that I-10 was shut down in the city for construction and we were routed around the city, through the Franklin Mountains on Loop 375. While it probably took twice as long as going through the city might have, it was a gorgeous drive with minimal traffic.
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Around Las Cruces, Barry spotted this huge metal road runner on top of a hill beside the road.
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One of the overlooks down into El Paso from our detour route on Loop 375. This is the east side of the city. The west side was larger but we missed that overlook until it was too late.
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This was a really interesting uplift in the Franklin Mountains outside of El Paso.
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We made it to Van Horn on the first leg of our trip. As we pulled away from the registration area to park our car, we spied this guy loitering around the bushes in the hotel. We were excited to see a real roadrunner! After Barry snapped the picture he ran off to an adjacent open field.
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When we went down to breakfast - we knew we were back in Texas. I just love the Texas-shaped waffles!
Today we are headed to Ft Worth. It will be an epic drive if we make it there (7 hours of drive time + lunch + bathroom breaks, but as incentive we are looking forward to lunch at Spring Creek Barbeque tomorrow.
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This is unheard of in the east. It was hard for Barry and I to feel comfortable going this fast!
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The stretch of road from Monahans to Odessa is filled with oil drilling rigs, oil wells, and oil-equipment supply businesses. It is not hard to see how big oil production is to this part of Texas. Here are some wells in work.
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One of the many oil fields we saw coming into the city from the southwest. On the north side of Odessa, when we would drive down to play Odessa in high school football, there were fields which had much more densly packed pumps.
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We ate lunch in Odessa and as we exited the freeway, we caught a picture of one of the many fields of tanks. Although we couldn't determine what they held, we think they are part of the fracking operations.
After a tasty lunch at Jason's Deli, we looked for a carwash to run our minivan through. It was still covered with layers and layers of dust from the unpaved roads in New Mexico.
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We made it to Ft Worth, ate dinner at Don Pablos and checked into our hotel and collapsed. The next day, as promised - lunch at Spring Creek Barbeque. This restuarant was here when we lived here in the 1980's and it is still one of our favorite places for Texas brisket and peach cobbler with ice cream!
As we were driving into Ft Worth on I-20, we were amazed at the growth in Weatherford. When we lived in Aledo - there was not much to the west along I-20. Now it is almost non-stop shopping, housing and entertainment. Guess that is what almost 30 years does to an area!
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The interior of Spring Creek Barbeque. Cobbler and luscious never-ending rolls come from the area on the right! The rolls are delivered right to your table - even better.
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After a fun dinner with dear friends who had also retired, talking about old times, new adventures and shared friends, we turned in.
Today we are going to drive from Ft Worth, TX to Vicksburg, MS, with a stretch goal of Jackson, MS. This recreates the first leg of our trip when we moved to Georgia in July of 1991. Only then we were doing it with 5 meowing cats, two cars and Lori pregnant. Lori thinks it will be much more pleasant this time!
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After we headed out of Dallas on I-20, Barry noticed that the in-car navigation had gone silent and then he saw the number of miles to our next turn!
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Welcome to Mississippi! As we headed east, things were getting greener with more lush foilage. Just after we crossed the Mississippi river and passed through Vicksburg, we found ourselves in a tunnel of trees - it remained this dense pretty much across the state until we neared Alabama.
We did make it to Jackson, but we were zombies by then. We had dinner in a restaurant next to the hotel and then crashed. Unfortunately Lori chose poorly and although it was a lovely hotel - one whole side backed on I-20 (and I mean it wasn't 100 yards away) and we felt like there were semi-trucks driving through our room the entire night. Neither one of us slept very well with the noise.
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Georigia! The trees are still lush and green, but are a little further back from the road and often open onto farmland just starting to green up with the tiniest of plants.
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As we got close to Atlanta and it looked like we were going to make it through before rush hour traffic (we had gotten on the road early to ensure that), I-20 came to a standstill. We are not sure why, but according to Waze the stoppage went on for miles. We bailed and ended driving into Canton on backroads through Paulding and Cobb counties before rejoining I-575 at Barrett Parkway in Kennesaw. When we got home, we snapped a picture of the trip odometer - 4,342 miles in 22 days passing through 9 states!
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