How to Git Through Texas Real Good

I wanted to come home from Austin via a different route, so I decided to spend my night on the road in Plainview. The less said about the Best Western Conestoga, the better, but getting there was a hoot and a half.

You see, I like to pick the out-of-the-way roads, no matter where I drive. I want to see countryside and relics like the old jaihouse pictured here near Clairemont. This works out fine most everywhere but is especially successful in a huge state like Texas, where the rural speed limit is 70 mph, no matter what the road. I picked Plainview because getting there meant I could take the back roads and miss San Angelo and Lubbock, and the next day go on up through the Panhandle before heading west to New Mexico. It worked out better than I’d ever imagined. For much of the day, I was the only car on the highway, wherever I went.

Basically, I took Texas Rt. 71 from Austin to Brady (highly recommended) and then got creative. I went north from Brady on US 283 but cut west on Rt. 765 through Doole and Millersville to US 83 and up through Paint Rock to Ballinger. That’s when Texas let me have it.

From Ballinger I took Rt. 158 to Bronte and Robert Lee, then Rt. 208 to Colorado City and beyond. (The picture above is from Kent County, Texas.) That took me to Rt. 70, which I followed north to Rt. 193 west and a warren of tiny, empty roads that somehow sent me to Interstate 27 and the last few miles to Plainview just as it was getting dark. This entire route was devoid of traffic, a Texas twilight zone. I stopped wherever I wanted to take pictures, sometimes parking crossways in the middle of the road for a lazy shot without stepping out of the car. That’s how empty it was. In rural west Texas, even the populated areas are empty, so if there’s no one there at all…

For most of the day, it was also unspeakably hot. I saw 103° F on the dashboard thermometer for the longest time. Nonetheless, telling myself it’s my BIRTHDAY, dammit, I drove most of the time with open windows. Every now and then I’d cave in for a while and have the AC on, but not for long. I’m just an open windows kind of guy.

About two hours before sunset, I drove through a 20-mile stretch of torrential rain and howling wind ahead of a cluster of gigantic thunderstorms. As I had started the day with a dip at Barton Springs, the water seemed appropriate. For some reason, there wasn’t any hail, but frequent cloud-to-ground lightning in the middle of the downpour more than made up for it. The bolts were so close, I wondered if lightning could strike a moving car. On the other side of the rain, however, was air cooled by evaporation, and the temperature dropped to 72°! You had to be there at the end of a long day with the windows down to know how good that felt. But what a fine adventure for my birthday, and what a great way to re-experience the land of my birth.

Next up, the weird tale of mysterious Fort Union in New Mexico, and why Plainview is Paris compared to Dimmitt.

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