I decided to drive on down to Dallas for the annual Fantasy Baseball Draft. The draft was on Saturday so I decided to take Friday off, leave Thursday night from work, proceed down I-25 to Raton NM, catch US 87 East, stop in Amarillo to sleep, continue on to Dallas Friday, stay with a friend Friday night, draft Saturday morning/afternoon, head back to Amarillo Saturday evening, spend the night and then head on home via Raton Sunday.
It almost worked.
Thursday, a snow storm blew through the area but it cleared up by afternoon and I figured that Raton Pass would be cleared by the time I got there. And it was. It took a while getting through the pass since I was right behind the plow that was clearing it, but I reached Raton by 9 PM. From Raton, I would catch US 87 straight through to Amarillo. Except that the nice Police Officer said that US 87 was closed and wouldn’t be cleared until mid-morning (it is very windy in that part of NM and snow drifts tend to get very deep) and there were a lot of 18-wheelers parking by the side of the road, waiting for it to open. It was not going to be a good drive in the morning.
But, I remembered from the last time I fled Texas, back in 1992, that there was a way to get to I-40 from Raton without having to backtrack all the way to Albuquerque. So I headed on down to Springer, found a gas station that was still open, checked out their map and indeed found the route that backtracked my flight when I missed the US 87 turnoff in Amarillo in ’92 and ended up on I-40 heading to Albuquerque. (I realized, as I approached the New Mexico border, that I was on the wrong track and found the back road route to Raton on the map and got off at San Jon) This time, I was going in reverse. And rather than drive all night (like I did last time) I was going to find a place to sleep before I got to Amarillo. So, after zipping through the New Mexican night, I ended up in Tucumcari and got a room at a motel on Route 66. Awakening bright and late Friday morning I got on I-40 and headed east to Amarillo (about 2 hours away) where I once again almost found the right road to Dallas. I got off on US 87 South towards Lubbock, nagged by the thought that something wasn’t right. And before going too far I realized that I needed US 287 South to get to Dallas. So, I turned around, got back to I-40 and followed the signs to US 287 South and continued on for another 6 hours to Dallas, hitting the Metroplex just at rush-hour. I was immediately reminded why I fled Texas 13 years before.
I found my friend’s place, even though he had flown off to India several hours earlier, got on line to check the baseball web-pages and got to sleep early and slept soundly. The next morning I headed over to the draft, selected my team and then went to diner with some fellow owners. (Mr. Wok’s in Plano, very tasty Chinese) After dinner, I headed back to Amarillo. Got to Amarillo about 12:30, found a comfortable motel room for the night and slept as long as I wanted. About this time, time was springing forward, but that isn’t relevant to this tale. Sunday morning, I refueled, body and car, and carefully followed the US 87 and US 287 North signs out of town and started home. The drive home was rather uneventful. Texas has this annoying habit of having divided highways with 70MPH speed limits running into little towns every 30 miles where the speed limit through town is 35 MPH. And you know that these towns probably get most of their revenue from the suckers who don’t slow down.
So I was toodling along, minding the towns when they showed up and then suddenly noticed I was in Oklahoma (the roads were better). OK was not on my itinerary. I figured I would continue on to the next town, Boise City, and find out what happened. From previous trips I had this vague idea that Boise City was in New Mexico, maybe I was just going to take the long way around. I stopped at a station in Boise City, told the clerk I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was apparently lost. She asked where was I supposed to be? Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, or Texas? because otherwise I was stuck in OK. I told her I was heading to Colorado and she suggested I stay on US 287 to Lamar, Colorado and then head over to Pueblo and I-25, or I could take this other highway over to Clayton, NM and catch US 87 there to Raton, NM and I-25. It was about the same distance either way. (Evidently, I missed the split of US 87 and US2 287 in Dumas or Dalhart many miles down the road and kept blindly following the US 287 signs. I couldn’t believe I had completely missed New Mexicio. Do you know how big that state is?
I decided to try the Lamar way so I wouldn’t have to learn a new route sign from the one I had been following for the past 500 miles. Colorado wasn’t far beyond Boise City and I settled in for a long drive. Denver was 288 miles away, Lamar about 80. I haven’t been in that part of Colorado before, the Southeastern plains. There are actually towns below 4000 feet in that part of the state. (In Colorado, the town limit signs announce the town name and the elevation of the town, not the population as found in many other states. People in Colorado can get pretty prickly about their elevation. I live at 7200 feet, and I’m not in the mountains.)
I drove though a wind farm just south of Lamar. It was rather impressive seeing just the blades turning over the horizon of the ridge. As you proceeded, the tower and turbine slowly came into view. But, initially, just a couple of very large blades circled through the air above the ridge.
I got to Lamar and caught US 50 west to Pueblo, found NPR and listened to the Thomas Jefferson Hour to pass the time. I had thought briefly about staying on US 287 up to Limon and then catching US 24 back to the Springs, but I had been that way before and US 50 was new, so I toodled on. It was pretty anticlimatic after that. I-25 was I-25. Been there, done that. Got home about 3:30 MDT and started to catch up on all I missed while I was gone.
Next year, someone else can drive.