Texas Totality

 Random observations: Did you see the moon tonight? The slenderest crescent, with the dark portion of the moon faintly illuminated by Earthshine. It reminded me of the eclipse yesterday, when it neared totality. This trip has made me realize that all motel and hotel rooms now have tile instead of carpet. Brown, woodgrain tile - all of them. In the Great Wide Open you can see weather coming from a long way away. You get a glimpse of your future. We drove a long way today, from Junction TX to Sierra Vista AZ, and the weather caught us once. I-10 was under construction and we were headed uphill when a thunderstorm dumped rain, then snow, on us travelers. It wasn't a lot of snow, but it was enough to make the tires spin when you used the accelerator. The slushy texture of the snow on the road made steering approximate instead of exact. Tense moments. Later rainstorms were more distant and kind of picturesque, actually. And the landscape out the window was kind of interesting, too. When...

 Here we are, lazy boys in Junction, TX. But we had a long day.  We rolled out of Fort Stockton before sunrise. I decided that the Fort Stockton landscape looked just as good in the dark as it does in the light. Maybe better.  Along the way, we were greeted by a mountain that seemed, um, happy to see us. The desolate landscape greened up very slowly as we began crossing the occasional small river, starting with the venerable Pecos River. Yellow flowers (primroses?) colored the median and the roadsides.  We gassed up in Junction and headed east, eventually switching to Hwy 290 and then Tivydale Road. The vegetation continued to get greener, shifting to patches of oaks with green grass growing beneath them. Bluebonnets joined the primroses. 270 miles from our start In Tivydale, my pick for an obscure viewing location, we stopped at a very wide, elongated road shoulder where a couple of people were already parked. Eventually there were seven vehicles there. It took a co...

 We woke up slowly in Presidio. After a full breakfast (demanded by my brother, irrelevant for me) we made the drive to Lajitas, Terlingua, and Alpine. We ended up in Fort Stockton.  The weather forecast now says "Cloudy" for our Monday target but we'll search around for a spot that might be clear. If not, we're having a good time anyway. Here are some photos from our time next to the Rio Grande between Presidio and Lajitas. In Terlingua I was able to get Pat some decent looks at an American Kestrel. On the way to Fort Stockton, at 75 MPH, I was able to view a beautiful Ferruginous Hawk. Except for those, all the soaring birds today were Turkey Vultures, once forming a "kettle" of circling birds that would have looked good in a Western movie. And here's a photo from our hotel room in Fort Stockton. This is pretty typical of this entire section of West Texas. :) Now it's time to rest, then explore the sizzling entertainment options in Fort Stockton on...

 Dusted. We're dusted. Recovering slowly in the room with the help of pizza and beer.  After we left Benson, we headed east on an I-10 that provided three lanes eastbound, then later two for the entire duration of our journey. There's a sort of set of cultural expectations, plus psychological games, when vehicles of different speeds use the two lanes. So there was a lot of jockeying.  In the morning, before we left Benson, the wind was moderate. But for most of the trip it was strong, even gale-force, and it kicked up enormous clouds of dust. Cold, too. The dust would remain with us, thicker or thinner, for the rest of the day, blocking the long, long views of West Texas. Admittedly, some of the views weren't that uplifting, even without dust clouds. The sun sure looked funny through all that dust. We had lots of minor car troubles, where the 2020 Edge refused to start. After a couple of hours of visiting auto parts stores and even a Ford dealership, we got the advice to ...

 It's a nice morning, mostly sunny, almost no wind. Temperature forecast for Presidio this afternoon is 84 degrees. We'll finish taking advantage of the amenities in this Motel 6 and then hit the road. 463 miles to go today. That'd be a pretty long day on my motorcycle, but should be all right in a car.  Maybe sopaipillas for breakfast! Weather forecast for our spot in eclipse country on Monday is "PM Thunderstorms." So there's still hope.

 Off to a busy start, I left my house at about 0600 to drive through the dark and the rain to my brother's house, 70 miles away. The rain eased in the middle of the trip but it was wet at both ends. After a simple breakfast of bagels and coffee, we packed his car and departed. I-5 south to San Diego was reasonably fast, for people in the carpool lane, and I-8 over the mountains to the desert was a pretty ride. At the summit, just above 4000 feet, snow dusted the chaparral on the slopes next to the road.  The drive to Yuma was easy, complicated a bit by a strong wind coming from mostly behind us. That wind is still blowing tonight as I write this in Benson, AZ. It'll continue tomorrow morning, then mellow. The sand dunes west of Yuma were whipping drifts of sand across the road. Cattle Egrets patrolled the agricultural fields. Nearly every soaring bird was a Turkey Vulture, and the others were to distant to ID. After we lunched in Yuma we set out to get as far east as we could ...