Traveling the Backroads

As I get older and enjoy a slower pace of travel more, I try to take backroads rather than interstate highways whenever I can.  The RV gets better mileage by slowing down, and I usually find many more interesting things to see and photograph along the way. 

“Interesting” usually means good.  Scenic. Sometimes even breathtaking vistas that have been preserved and protected away from the beaten path.

Interesting can also mean funny or unique— a small town’s way of luring tourists, and “Roadside America” at its quirky best.  When I took the backroads from Alamogordo, NM over to the west Texas panhandle on my way back home from snowbirding in the Southwest, I made Roswell, NM a quick stop, and it didn’t disappoint.   Roswell is known for it’s UFO-sightings and “Space Alien” theme--- these extraterrestrials are everywhere!



But “Interesting” also can also reveal the not-so-nice aspects of American life.  I’m not sure if it’s due to the additional stop signs and slower travel pace, but I seem to notice many poverty-stricken small towns when I travel the backroads.  The towns that didn’t get the Interstate and all of the chain stores, motels, and restaurants that go with it are often hanging by a thread, especially with the most recent economic downturn.  These towns never seem to get any of those Government handouts to repair their schools, sidewalks, streets and bridges.  So, is it any wonder that residents of these places predominantly vote for smaller taxes and government?

Backroads also hide some things that big agri-businesses don’t want most consumers to see—the infamous “feed lots” where most of our Happy Meal and Triple Whopper burgers originate.   Is it a mere coincidence that most cattle seen grazing on ranches along the Interstate highways look like this?
 


While the feed lots hidden away on backroads look like this?
 

I always thought of West Texas as being vast, wide-open space.  Plenty of room for cattle to roam, and indeed there is.  However, traveling through Hereford, Texas the self-proclaimed “Beef Capital of the World,” I failed to see even one single grass-fed cattle ranch!


Every last one of them was a large, corporate-run feed lot such as this:
 

(By the way, the chicken and poultry industry is not any better—I saw just as many closed-walled, zero-ventilation corporate chicken barns along the Arkansas backroads last Fall).

Seeing some of these things along the backroads has truly changed my daily life.  I now try to avoid meat with most meals, and since discovering Black Bean burgers and other vegetarian alternatives, I’ve not had any desire to eat a beef hamburger in over a year.  Imagine how better the environment (and our personal health) would be if every person skipped meat for even just one or two meals a week?!! 

The backroads provide a broader and more diverse picture of American life than the bland, homogenized scenes found at most Interstate exits from coast to coast.  While the scenes might not always be pleasant, traveling the backroads usually provide a rich and meaningful experience to the traveler.  And  frequenting these routes more often just might help revitalize these communities as well.

Oklahoma Whale Watching

The Interstate between Oklahoma City and Tulsa is a toll Turnpike.  While fast and efficient, it’s also a pretty dull drive.   Since I wasn’t all that excited about returning to snowy, cold Chicago, I decided to take the slower scenic Route 66 road that parallels must of the Turnpike through northeast Oklahoma.

I saw some vintage Route 66 stuff, and plenty of small towns….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But the one roadside attraction I was REALLY wanting to see was, perhaps, the most outrageous Route 66 attraction of them all…the Blue Whale in Catoosa, Oklahoma just northeast of Tulsa.

There are some great stories about how this little park was created, and later, how it was renovated and brought back to it’s original splendor.  The park is no longer operational, but still is freely open for tourists to stop and photograph.

 

After this final diversion, it was time to put the rubber to the road and head on home.  Our final night of this 6-week adventure was spent the same way it began….at a Wal-Mart parking lot.   But this time, surprisingly, there was one other camper in the lot, and it just happened to be one of our old trailers, a T@B!

What a great end to a great trip!   Can’t wait to snowbird again next year!

Two Unique Parks on the way Home

While there were plenty of free Wal-Mart overnight parking opportunities between New Mexico and Illinois, and I did indeed stay at one on the last night of my trip, I decided to bypass the Interstates for much of my drive home so I could stay at two unique parks—Palo Duro Canyon in Texas, and the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma.  Both are true geological oddities amidst their more normal surroundings.

The Texas panhandle is, for the most part, F-L-A-T.  Tumbleweeds, Windmills, and barren ranch land like this.

So, imagine a place just 5 miles from this barren windmill, that is entirely different!  Palo Duro Canyon State Park is considered the “Grand Canyon of Texas” and indeed it is a welcome relief to descend away from the flatlands into an entirely different place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Within 5 minutes of arriving to our campsite, Millie and I already started seeing wildlife all around us…a few deer in the woods behind our campsite, and a flock of wild turkeys spent the night roosting in a big oak tree near our site.  Here’s a picture of one of them waltzing right through our site on the way to his evening roost--

But the funniest animal sighting of the evening was this pair of Cardinals that had come to inspect Millie’s dinner bowl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yep, that’s right!  Cardinals like to eat dog food too!  Millie was not amused.

The next day, we left the Texas panhandle and drove into west central Oklahoma.  Again, more F-L-A-T and barren land, more tumbleweeds…you get the idea.  So, I had to stop and see a place that would audaciously call itself the Wichita “Mountains”. 

Sure enough, as I got close to the Wildlife Preserve’s entrance, there was a small range of sizeable rocky hills that appeared as “mountains” compared to their surroundings.  This place also had longhorn cattle freely roaming the range and even a small lake that seemed more reminiscent of northern Ontario than western Oklahoma.



Millie didn’t care where we were—it was a lake, and that could mean just one thing….swimming!

The campground at the park was nestled in a very unusual, stubby, craggily looking forest along one side of the lake.  With the leaves still off these trees, and a full moon, it made for a “spooky” but enjoyable final camping evening around the fire.

Sand instead of Snow!

After a month in the desert, Millie had had enough!  She wanted to run and play Frisbee again, and the Sonoran desert with all it’s sticky, pokey cacti was nowhere to do that!  So, when we rolled into White Sands National Monument, Millie was thrilled that I let her do a little bit of “stealth” Frisbee playing in the dunes next to the parking lot.

After leaving Bosque del Apache, we stopped at Truth or Consequences and Elephant Butte State Park to work for a few days. 

While it was still a bit nippy (only in the 50’s during the day, and into the 30’s at night), Millie was happy to see water again, and she got one very quick, very chilly swim in the lake one afternoon.

I love New Mexico’s colors and laid back lifestyle and would love to spend more time here, but it’s at a higher elevation than most of Arizona, so it gets pretty cold and snowy at times during the winter.  Fortunately, winter doesn’t last long here--- so, by mid-February, it was a nice place to spend a week waiting for the right weather conditions to make my final migration home.

Chicago had been blasted with a huge blizzard and was still digging out from 3 feet of snow.  Some friends had posted pictures of their driveways where snow had drifted up so high that it nearly covered the garage door!  Ah well, the only white stuff I had to contend with was the sand Millie and I tracked into the motorhome!

Most of central New Mexico is Government land used for testing missiles (the atomic bomb testing was done on the northern portion of this range in the 1940’s). so there are few roads and even fewer people here.  Yet, just before you enter White Sands National Monument, you must stop at one of these dumb Border Patrol checkpoints that are dotted across NM, AZ, and CA.
 
Each of these checkpoints seemed to be the same routine—dozens of shiney new Border Patrol SUVs and other equipment sitting unused, a half dozen or so BP officers sitting around, and 1 officer going through the motions of interviewing each motorist.  None of these checkpoints ever asked to see anything or even look at my driver’s license.  They simply asked “are you a U.S. resident?” “Ok, good.  Have a nice day!”

I’m all for protecting our borders and ensuring our border patrol agents have the resources they need to do the job.  I could also see how setting up temporary random checkpoints well inland from the borders would help catch any of those missed at the border itself.  But, whose bright idea was it to put all these permanent checkpoints across the Southwest, and then not bother to even really “check” the vehicles coming through?  If Congress is looking to cut the budget, hey fellas, here’s another glaringly obvious choice before cutting grandma’s Medicare!

Ok, I’ll climb off the soapbox now and move on to soaptrees!   Soaptree Yucca plants are one of the only plants that manage to grow at White Sands, so they made some natural subjects for photographs:

 
And of course, there were the dunes themselves, and a nice New Mexico sunset to go with them:

We spent our last night in New Mexico along the side of a mountain at Oliver Lee State Park near Alamogordo.   Wished I could have spent more time there, but 70 mph wind gusts were being predicted for the next day, so I knew we had to high-tail it off that unprotected perch to start heading home.