Just Another Manic Sunday

This entry started off as a regular 'Daily Recap', but as the day went on and it got weirder, the journal entry took morphed into its own thing.

Sunday, May 17 day 14

Is this the real life?

Leaving San Antonio, taking the long way to Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

For several days I’d been trying to decide whether to go straight to Albuquerque, or take a longer route and visit a few things along the way. I decided that three days of driving straight to Albuquerque would be a good way to squander three days that I could be experiencing new things! And even though my planned stops would add an extra day to the drive time, the point of the journey is the journey! So I set off with a list of places to go see, plus whatever else I happen upon along the way.

I thought a simple day on the road would be unremarkable. It was not.

As I set off from San Antonio I had an unsettled feeling that sat with me all day and for the life of me I could not put my finger on what was causing it.

My first stop of the day was "Stonehenge II" in Ingram, TX. I visited here last year for the solar eclipse. I thought at the time (and still do) how amazingly random it was that a solar eclipse passed over a replica of Stonehenge in rural Texas! I couldn't pass up a chance to revisit the site on this trip.

Arriving there was a bit jarring by contrast to the last time I was there because it was starkly empty. Last year it was bustling and full of hundreds of people. Cordoned off by garish orange fencing and officials checking visitors' tickets.

On a random weekday though, half a dozen visitors was the peak.

I walked around and took some photos. Mostly film with the same camera I had last year. It'll be interesting to compare the pictures. Seeking out some shade I joined a father and daughter at a picnic table and we struck up conversation. It's only natural to ask 'where are you visiting from?'

They had ridden their motorcycle from Houston and were making a weekend of the trip to Ingram Stonehenge.

This little chat wasn't weird, per se, but there was a tangible energy and connection with the young woman. I really enjoyed meeting and talking with her, but couldn't tell you exactly why. It was one of those nice connections that you make in passing, yet aren’t trivial. 

Further down the road I had to pull off at a service station.

At the end of the off ramp was an abandoned building I popped over to snap some pics of.

I stopped to plug in my van because the house battery wasn’t charging like it should. The manager of the service station was kind enough to let me to plug in for a little while. At least to get enough juice so I could start the generator.

I killed time inside and decided (against my better judgment) to order a burger from the in-house Sonic. I stood ignored at the counter for a seeming eternity. When I called a polite "hello?" the person in the back appeared genuinely surprised to see me, even though she made eye contact with me at least twice while I was waiting. "Be right with you!" she said, and then walked away.

When she finally came to take my order, she couldn’t figure out how to ring up a "cheeseburger" on the register. It was a complete mystery.

At this point I started to wonder if I was secretly on a prank tv show.

She called for another worker come over to help, and he couldn’t figure it out either. They kept finding 'bacon cheeseburger' and then looking at me expectedly, as if to ask "that's what you want, right?" Almost imperceptibly I shook my head and they went back to their scavenger hunt.

The interaction was only made more surreal when, after they finally figured out the order and I got my food, they told me they were all out of ketchup. I was nonplussed.

With my van adequately charged (for the time being), I bid farewell to confused Sonic.  

After driving a little more I had to stop again to investigate the charging issue further. I pulled off at the next exit that appeared to have a service station and restaurant. Instead I found myself at an abandoned RV park next to an abandoned restaurant, gas station and car museum! An abandoned pickup sat in the parking lot on 4 flat tires. Around back a Toyota Camry looked like a beached whale marooned on the ground without any wheels at all. 

The RV park was huge, easily 300 spots. There were 3 or 4 seemingly uninhabited RVs, but also a few that appeared to be occupied. Curious if there was still power for me to plug in, I checked out the hook up at one of the RV slots. IDK if the outlet was even there, the whole thing had been taken over by a wasp’s nest… that was also abandoned.

While I was there working on my van a steady stream of cars rolled by on their way to the gas station, lured in by the same 50' tall sign that had attracted me. They’d get out, check the pumps, look perplexed, and then disappointedly get back in their cars and drive off. One after another like a steady marching of ants.

I was parked in the shade behind the abandoned car museum while I worked on my van. In that time 5 or 6 families drove up to the same area, parked, and got out to look around. Young kids played in the overgrown grass. A broken tricycle sat off to the side, teasing the kids with what could have been.

With the issue potentially fixed (mitigated, with a paperclip and duct tape, I kid you not) I got back on the road.

The original idea for the day had been to visit Sonora Caverns in west Texas. However, between the enjoyable conversation at Stonehenge and the unexpected pitstops to charge I no longer had enough time or energy for that particular side-quest.

I just wanted to drive and then be done. I got back on the highway and headed west on I-10, as I’d been doing for hundreds of miles already. Deciding to push on all the way to Odessa, where I'd spend the night.

The evening drive was both surreal and serene.

Where eastern Texas was flat and, frankly, a little boring - west Texas was an endless rolling series of mountains and mesas. With the sun in front of me the sky was a rich blue tinted with the orange of the setting sun. While the layers of mountains looked like gray phantoms; the rolling hills and winding roads revealed different vistas and layers of mountains that looked like construction paper cutouts. It was beautiful and desolate, and perhaps a bit lonely.

For two hours the golden light of dusk held my attention and helped the miles go by more pleasantly.

It felt like a strange time dilation that the sunset lasted so long. I was questioning if what I was experiencing was real.

A week later it finally occurred to me what happened - I was driving west, towards the setting sun, at nearly 80mph. I was basically chasing the sun as it was setting and the effect was to draw out the sunset. What normally would have been maybe 45 minutes or an hour of sunset extended to almost 2 whole hours! It felt like a surreal gift.

I basked in my gratitude of being able to experience this drawn out sunset. The beauty of it helped me put behind the tumult of the day and reminded me why I was doing this at all.

Epilogue

Around 10pm I arrived at Odessa Stonehenge - not only my second Stonehenge of the day, but the second one in Texas no less. It was dark but the megaliths were lit from below with a soft light.

Not everything is bigger in Texas; This is billed as this is a very close replica but it came up a few feet shorter (or, 1 meter shorter for the brits) than its English inspiration. 

Having come all this way on such a surreal day, I wandered into the stone circle in a bit of a haze. Not really thinking, just experiencing.

There was warmth coming off the large limestone blocks, radiating back the heat from the day. Not warm to the touch, but I could feel it when I stood near. 

I sat on a “fallen” stone and gave myself space to just be. Feeling the space and appreciating the work that went into the replica. Yet also conscious of the traffic nearby and the lights from McDonalds and Home Depot blazing just short bit away across the street. A perfectly odd close to a perfectly odd day, simultaneously serene and chaotic.

Finally, as I was readying the van for sleep it occurred to me I hadn’t eaten since that disappointing Sonic burger, yet I also wasn’t terribly hungry. 

I turned out the lights. Another day of adventure awaits in the morning.