There are millions of blogs, articles, and posts about The Great American Road Trip. But there's one aspect I've never seen discussed. Often The Great American Road Trip isn't undertaken just for pleasure and adventure. Often it's born out of necessity. Someone or something needs to get from point A to point B, so you plot a route, find a vehicle, stock up on snacks and go. We undertook such a road trip this summer. My brother-in-law and his wife needed to get two vehicles and a houseful of goods from Utah to Fort Worth, Texas. They rented a 26 ft. Penske truck and we took off.
It's really a very beautiful drive. Over Soldier Summit and down into the desert along the east side of the San Rafael Swell. On into the roadrunner cartoon redrock wonderland of Moab. When we first started going to Moab 35 years ago we were more likely to run into a real prospector on a backcountry road than a bicyclist or backpacker. Now the town is wildly overgrown, overcrowded, and in the midst of a serious housing shortage. But the redrock buttes and canyons are as stunning as ever.
Then up to the high plateaus and farmlands of southwest Colorado, where the sky is bigger than your imagination.
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| Big Clouds, Bigger Sky - Cajone, Colorado |
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| Our Little Caravan |
We spent the night in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. I've made this drive in both directions several times, but central New Mexico is still unknown to me, because we always end up driving through it at night.
Day two we cross into the Texas plains. Windmills and cattle both seem to outnumber people, but the land is fertile, green and well-kept.
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| Fort Worth Bound |
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| Brick-Paved Street in Childress, Texas |
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| Coffee Shop Landscaping in Childress |
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| Old Mansion in Childress |
In the evening of day two, stiff and saddlesore, we arrived in Fort Worth. Keller, to be more precise.
Between moving tasks, we visited Reunion Tower in downtown Dallas. We also visited the nearby site of John F. Kennedy's assassination, which was eerie and abandoned at 10:00 pm on a weeknight.
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| Reunion Tower |
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| Dallas Skyline from the Tower |
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| Dallas School Book Depository, from where Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK, is in the lower left behind the castle building. |
We also spent a full day at the Dallas Museum of Art. It was a pleasant surprise, with a strong collection representing multiple continents and time periods.
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| Dallas Museum of Art |
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| Semiramis, Female Ruler of Assyria |
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| A drilled glacial erratic boulder, part of the special exhibit "Toward No Earthly Pole", by Swiss photographer Julian Charriere |
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| Middle Eastern manuscript from the 1500's |
Our adventure ended with a flight home to Utah. Mission accomplished.
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