Day 68 : You know you're out West when......

Friday November 5th, 2010

........you have signs like this taped to the motel wall. I have neither gun nor boots, so it wasn't for me. I was up early this morning, showered, and finished packing my stuff to head back on the road. Staying inside is nice, and warm, and my body needs the rest, but being on the road is what the trip is about. So I am ready to get back out there. The next town is Albany, about 36 miles from Anson. I should be able to do more than half those today, and be in Albany before lunch tomorrow. Around 7:30 I was heading out the door.

The guy in the room next to mine was loading his car, and we stopped to talk a few minutes. His name is Jimmy Williams from Hobbs, New Mexico. He is retired after spending most of his life in the oil fields. Jimmy knew the Fort Worth area pretty well, and offered a few suggestions about walking through there. After we talked, I headed to the local convenience store to buy peppermints for the horses. No luck with that, they were out of them and the other store didn't stock them. So, maybe in Albany if I don't forget.

It was cold last night, but when the sun gets up it warms pretty quickly. There was almost no wind, so by midday it must have been close to 70. Most of the cotton is gone from the landscape, replaced primarily by the scrubby land and ranches. I occasionally see mistletoe on the trees on the road, and that reminds me that Christmas is right around the corner. I saw a hawk fly off of a power line, and then start doing lazy circles in the sky. With each circle, it would get higher seemingly without any effort on it's part. Before long it was almost out of sight. Not sure if I have ever seen that before.

Around 2 pm I received a call from two friends at work.... Ed Bixler and Su-fen Wang. It was nice hearing from them, and catching up on the latest happenings. One bad thing about the blog....Everything I wanted to tell them about the trip, they already knew. As I started back walking I saw a large windfarm with hundreds of windmills. You can probably see it on Google Maps if you look halfway between Anson and Albany, east of where Hwy 6 intersects with Hwy 180. The windmills continued for several miles, so a rather large field of them. I also passed a Historic Marker for the Bud Matthews Switch of the Texas Central Railway. It was interesting reading.

Around 5 or so, who drives up but George McDonald ( the attorney from Fort Worth) with his mother. He is taking her to his home for a few days, and wanted her to see this man walking down the road pushing his cart. When George told me he might bring her by, I could just imagine what my mother would say about the walk...."Why would you do a fool thing like that?" So I could imagine his mother saying much the same thing. But she was very gracious, and it was nice meeting her.

I walked a little further and found a reasonably good place to camp for the night. It is a little away from the road, with fences to keep out the varmints. The sun was getting low and the temperature cooling off quickly. I had my tent up and was crawling inside in no time. It's not as cozy as the motel, but feels like where I am supposed to be. Not sure how many miles I did today, but must have been 20-25.

One thing I miss in these small towns is the USA today newspaper. It seems they don't deliver out this way. I especially like to read it on Friday and Monday, primarily for sports coverage. If the motels out this way have a complimentary paper, it's usually something local.