Three-Point Shots: Summer Road Trip 2023, Part 3

You meet the nicest people on the road.

         Welcome to another travelogue installment of Life Its Ownself! Once again, thanks to all my readers for helping me reach 500 subscribers, and welcome to all my new readers! Your support encourages me to write and publish regularly. All my content is free, but your paid subscription is a big affirmation. Please let me know how I’m doing by 1) liking, 2) subscribing, 3) sharing with others, and 4) commenting below.

         But first, your Moment of Zen …

(Looking north from Hwy. 82 near Elk, New Mexico, between Cloudcroft and Artesia.)

Sunday, August 27, 2023

         I continue my Summer Road Trip 2023 (TM) around the Southwest. I wrote about my exhilarating four days in El Paso here, and described the Beauty Way I experienced in northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona, and southwestern Colorado here. At the end of a week in that country, I spent a few days in Taos and then wound my way back south through New Mexico to Texas, including a visit with friends in Ruidoso I wrote about here.

1.    A Meditation on the Kindness of … Friends

         We’ve all heard the phrase, “the kindness of strangers,” and I dare say most of us have experienced it once or twice. A couple guys stop to help change a flat tire. An anonymous donor writes a check to help a teacher buy a year’s worth of school supplies. A father we barely know volunteers to help coach a Little League team. The world would be an even meaner and crueler place but for these moments of kindness.

         But I’d like to put in a good word here for the kindness of friends. In some ways, it is easier to accept kindnesses from strangers. There is no obligation beyond gratitude at their intervention. They will vanish back into the ebb and flow of life, never to reappear and ask you to help them change their tire.

         Sometimes a stranger’s kindness does blossom into a relationship. My dad signed up to coach a Little League team, but worried he’d be late for practice if traffic was bad. Another parent stepped up to help, and he and my father became good friends.

         As I was planning our Summer Road Trip 2023 (TM), I contacted friends to let them know I’d be passing through. I was hoping we could go to dinner, maybe; I am a reluctant houseguest inured to Ben Franklin’s wisdom that “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”

         Of course, none of my friends would hear of it, and insisted I stay with them. And they were great. And I was fine, my curmudgeonly loner self delighting in all the warmth and hospitality. In each case, parting was sweet sorrow, and the memories of my time with them are all exquisite – I hope mutually so.

         So, here’s to Michael Wyatt and Karla Frausto in El Paso, Lisa Kaindl and Mike Mulry in Taos, and Charlyn and Gerald Daugherty in Ruidoso. My times with you turned out to be the high points of my trip! Thanks, y’all!

2.    The Five Best Drives

         I love driving, and keep a mental record of all the loveliest stretches of road I’ve been on: from Fort Davis to Balmorhea, or from Ingram to Hunt in the Hill Country. It would only be fair to share my favorite drives from this road trip. Here they are, in somewhat arbitrary order of preference. Where possible, I’ve included a photo I snapped along that road.

1)            Ruidoso to Cloudcroft. Highway 244 splits off from Highway 70 and takes you over the mountains to Cloudcroft. For much of the way, the forest tops the mountains while the road winds alongside a beautiful, Christmas card-worthy, valley. Ruidoso is at about 7,000 feet, and you climb to about 8,700 feet before you get to Cloudcroft. Getting in behind an old logging truck slowed the trip down just perfectly.

2)            Durango to Silverton. This is the archetypal Colorado roadway – a two-lane road winding up and down through mountain passes, the edge only a yard or so from the asphalt. Off to the side, a dizzying drop but also a dizzying view: waterfalls sluicing off cliffsides, pine trees stretching to the sky, big panoramas opening up when you come around a bend. (Keep your eye on the road!) In parts, a light rain falling from clouds that are below the ridgeline.

(You’ve gotta keep your eye on the road looking at vistas like this, or they’ll be the last thing you ever see.)

3)            From Canyon de Chelly to Mexican Water. If you love the Intermountain West, you’ve going to love U.S.191. It runs all the way from the Mexican border at Douglas, Arizona to Yellowstone National Park. It snakes up the eastern edge of Arizona, and the stretch from Canyon de Chelly to Mexican Water is particularly lovely. The desert there is reminiscent (and a little east) of Monument Valley: a deep red floor broken by buttes and mesas on either side of the road. I drove it in the afternoon, which meant I saw the afternoon thunderstorms building up over the desert, and eventually drove through them. The rain fell so hard that it kicked up the red desert dust, so that I was driving through falling red mud for a few miles. By the time I got to Mexican Water the storms had stopped, and I turned eastward into glorious skies as I drove through Shiprock on into Farmington.

(Thunderheads and distant rain off Hwy. 191 north of Canyon de Chelly in Arizona.)

4)            From Angel Fire to Mora. I would have mentioned the drive from Taos to Angel Fire, which is lovely, but the New Mexico Department of Transportation had the road torn up for most of that distance. In Angel Fire, though, I turned south towards Mora. It was a fascinating combination of beautiful country and badly maintained road. In places, I’d have to squeeze to the side so an 18-wheeler could pass in the other direction. In a few places, the asphalt disappeared, and I was driving on a dirt road. Still, a lovely drive.  

5)            From Apache Springs to Santa Rosa. Heading south from Taos, Highway 84 drops out of the mountains into expansive ranchland. Afternoon clouds built up over the range and, towards sunset, dropped a quick and satisfying rain shower on Santa Rosa.

(Thunderheads build up east of Hwy. 64 south of Apache Springs, New Mexico.)

3.    A Programming Note

         Summer in Texas is winding down. The sun sets a minute or two earlier each day. Parents litter social media with their kids’ “first day of school” pictures. The temperature occasionally dips below 100°.

         We all know what that means: IMPEACHMENT!

         In case you’ve forgotten, the impeachment trial of Disgraced, Twice Indicted, Impeached and Suspended from Office Attorney General Ken Paxton begins on Tuesday, September 5. Life Its Ownself will cover the preliminaries and the trial itself, but I am still working out the details. Faithful readers will recall that, in May, we used a feature called Substack Chat to kibbitz together on the impeachment debate. I may use that again. I may do a podcast. Let me know your thoughts on how you’d like LIO to cover the trial in the comments.

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         Have a great weekend!