Rollin' cross Texas

Texas Rest Stop

This morning we left Amirilla and are rolling across that square part on the top of Texas heading towards New Mexico.

The land here is completely flat. Regis was given instructions to something, and was told to "Turn at the bottom of the hill.". When she asked "Hill . . What hill?", she was pointed towards the highway overpass. There are no hills (well, except for the ones from Nova Scotia) here except for the man made ones from the highway. As you look out, you always see way more sky than land - no wonder they call it the land of "Big sky".

It is dry and brown as far as you can see. There are very few trees, and they are grouped around the houses or towns. You see patches of green occasionally, but it is always agricultural land and you can expect to see the long automated irrigation machines slowly inching across the fields spraying a fine mist of water. Nothing grows here without being watered.

Texas Big Sky

We are driving on Interstate I40. We have been on the same road for two days, and do not have switch routes until sometime tomorrow. There is a local road running parallel to the highway on either side, and the exits and access to the highway are simply short roads leading to the local roads. The traffic on the local roads are supposed to yield to the Interstate traffic exiting or entering the highway, but we discovered they do not always watch for the Interstate traffic. Although, we always kept to these "official" exits, it is obvious from the tire tracks across the yellow grass on the road edges, that the locals do not bother with them. If they need to exit or enter the highway they just drive across the grass. There are no ditches, fences or barriers, just a slight dip in places. Even towing the trailer we would have no trouble driving off the highway over the grass.

I thought that Texas was the land of oil, but we have seen more wind farms than oil wells. This is a perfect place for these giant windmills, as it seems that a steady strong hot wind blows constantly.

As you drive through areas where humans have attempted to tame this land, you see the occasional "rust fields". Unlike back home, where the salt in the air and the roads along with the moisture completely destroy machinery, here it rusts more slowly, so fields gather generations of derelict farm vehicles and machinery, slowly rusting away, sandblasted by the constant wind. The cars and trucks look perfect, just old and rusty.

As we drive through this section, there is par hed brown land as far as you can see. It is fenced, and there are even a few cattle, but you can see no houses or signs of human dwelling. Who owns all this land?