The Long Way Home

Awoke this morning in the Angelina National Forest on a large reservoir. Actually we awake at about 4am when all the hunters and fisherman staying in the campground started their diesel trucks, yelled at their wives, and launched their boats. The sound of gunshot in the background (numbering in the hundreds by the time the sun rose) was comforting compared to the thought of these hunters stringing up their deer throughout the campground. Fortunately we arose later to a peaceful and bloodless scene. Martina did have to shake the spiders out of her boots though.

Louisiana. The concentration of churches we’ve seen along our road trip has always been high – and now it’s near saturation point. Some small towns have one on every main block. These are all Baptist churches.

How about this for a modern metaphor:

And here’s an exact english translation of the Greek Easter greeting and reply, ‘Χρηστός Ανέστη; Αλιθός Ανέστη.’ (I like how my iPhone does Greek corrections.)

By this time it was getting on in the day, but Nacogdoches was so pretty that we went for a walk up a beautiful street that looked like it had stepped back in time. Full of antique stored, luckily all closed. Here’s a selection of their windows.

Nacogdoches, Texas. If you were to invent interesting characters that you would like to meet and get to know, Lee Richards would be one of them. A taxidermist for 30 years, he currently has a huge backlog of work – which means mountains of tanned, inside-out deer-head skins, piles of antlers, and a workshop as surreal as it was well equipped. He even had a pair of antlers from two deer who killed each other, and locked antlers in the process. They were brought to him like that, and he couldn’t seperate them until he cut the antlers off the skulls.

We spent some time with Lee, admiring his fish with gaping mouths, birds in midflight, and many innocent-looking deer, including one from New Zealand. He has been awarded many times for his work, including aspects such as correctly rebuilt septums (he shined his torch through to show us) and airbrushed eyeball membranes.

We also admired his beloved Ironback Harley Davidson, which was parked inside the shop. He insisted on wheeling it out for us, where the sunlight would show it in all its glory. And after a few more photos, we were treated to a starting of the engine. Check out the clip of this on the videos page! A beautiful bike.

A very friendly guy – we even popped the bonnet of the Prius to show him how the hybrid worked. Can’t wait to process these rolls of film!

Beautiful roadside wildflowers – some look good enough to eat. And if we only photographed derelc gas stations on this road trip, we would still run out of cards and film.

The Texan ‘Lone Star’ symbol appears on houses, signs, and in infrastructure. Here’s a Texan power pylon.

Even the donkeys (mules?) are friendly in Texas. These guys came running and jostled for position when they realised there was a Gemmola portrait sitting going on.

We needed Internet desperately this
morning, so it was necessary to visit McDonalds. Fortunately we discovered a new item which will hopefully appear on the menu soon. Here it is – the Vegemite McMuffin. At $1.35 (plus vegemite cost) it’s a bargain! Just remember to also order a plastic knife.

Being unable to drive past a sign like this, we had to have a Texan steak. Even if it wasn’t as large as I’d expected, it was very tasty.

We made it into Fort Worth just in time to run through an auto carwash and get to Carmax for our appraisal. Carmax will buy any car you take them (within reason). They issue you a paper with the amount they’ll give you for the car. You can take it to any Carmax location nation-wide within 7 days – so we did this in preparation for Jackson where we can drive into Carmax and leave with a check. The only catch – you won’t sell your car anywhere for less than what Carmax will give you. We’re going to try a Toyota dealer in Jackson to see if we can’t get a few pennies more…

After the disappointment we camped on the bank of Joe Pool Lake, Arlington.

A rainy, cosy night in the tent at Bottomless Lakes, outside Roswell. Eight sinkholes that cowboys back in the day measured the depth of, and ascertained that they went right through to China. A more modern attempt puts them all between 17′ and 90′. Morning was nice and apart from a wet tent and boots it was a lovely morning. I didn’t even feel like throwing at our neighbours the McDonalds rubbish they left on their site as they pulled away. I’m not my usual self.

Crossed in Texas a short while ago. Our aim is to drive straight through (stopping for sleep) to have a day in Louisiana before we get to Jackson, Mississippi. Must be a lot of slow skunks here, as every few miles there’s a dead one and the car fills with foul skunky odours.

Not a lot to look at on this leg of the trip. Oil pumps, refineries, trucks, billboards for boots. The highest speed limit we’ve seen (80mph), everything really is bigger in Texas. Check out the jerky selection! Fortunately one brand had a 2-for-1 offer which solved the choice problem for us.

You can’t even hide from choice in the solitude of the men’s room around here. This cologne-spraying dispenser only needs a quarter for a puff of feeling fantastic. The hard part: Polo, Drakkar, Obsession, Eternity, or Polo Sport!

Yes! Texas really is bigger than Gemmola! The coffee selection alone baffled her, then she found this unbreakable travel mug…

On our way to tonight’s campsite we stopped in Roswell, home of alien research, to steal some wifi from McDonalds. Their network was not working, seems that the aliens beat us to it and took out the system when they landed their UFO on the router – I guess the disabled parking symbol does look a little like a flying saucer.

If you EVER get the chance to eat frozen custard, don’t think twice. Maybe it’s because we’d spent hours wandering though sand, but it was the most delicious frozen dessert I’ve eaten. I confirmed it by getting a second cup! And then as I ate it I watched like a mesmerised child through the window, as the frozen custard machine slowly squeezed out a long, firm, shall I say turd, of fresh goodness. I am going to own one of these machines some day. Not even Wonka has one! Now even I have a reason to say ‘God Bless the USA’.

The name of gentleman in the middle of our adjacent breakfast table in Tularosa went by the name L. Longtree Austin. When asked, he said the ‘L’ stood for ‘Longtree’… We had a recital of an amusing and warm poem, and left with a good knowledge of local history and a cd of his collected works, titled ‘The Ugly Red Chair’. His business card described him as’ Cowboy Poet’, and that ‘Jesus is our trail boss’.

Meanwhile, Martina is becoming very accustomed to her cup of Joe. (I didn’t think parting with espresso would be so smooth). Patriotically, she’s also replacing quality with quantity, which results in lots of car stops.

We can almost smell Mexico from here. El Paso, on the Texas/Mexico border is a chilli’s-throw away.

Here’s one Australia doesn’t have – a giant pistaccio. ‘The world’s largest’, they call such icons here. We bought some garlic pistaccio nuts… Mmm.

White Sands National Monument – the second main destination on our NM leg. White sands missile range engulfes the monument, and the road in has warning signs such as ‘no stopping on highway’, ‘do not pick up hitch-hikers in this area’, and ‘military appreciation day’. There are also frequent fly-bys from F16 jets, and the Trinity site, where the first nuclear weapon was detonated; A dubious attraction, particularly since to get there you drive through what looks like a fallout zone for half a day anyway. Last stop before the monument: ‘Alamogordo, the friendliest place on earth’.

White Sands. Wow. After a lot of rain (the roadside was covered with hail last night) the dunes had a rained-on texture, the temperature was warm and the the breeze cool and refreshing. We didn’t need to heed the warning signs about perishing in 100F-plus temperatures. Moody skies made up for the fact that we were shooting in the middle of the day. No Ken Duncan shots here, but we should have some keepers from our dune jaunt. Amazing serenity (between the F16 afterburners and sonic booms).