A Texas Tribute: A Damn Yankee Comes Home (but not to roost)

On our Excellent Adventure, Keith and I have traveled through much of the vast state of Texas, saving beautiful Big Bend country for another time. We have actually taken a shine to Texas and to Texans, but have yet to find a place here that feels like it could be home. However, now that Keith and I are officially legal residents of the Lone Star State, I feel it is a ripe time to claim my Texas heritage, especially since just yesterday in El Paso I paid homage to my ancestral roots by visiting the grave of my great grandfather, Will T. Rives. (Please note the world famous Chico's Tacos across the street from the cemetery, a restaurant that smelled so good as I paid my respects that we had to go and sample their goods soon after.)

Here I am offering some prayers of thanks to the spirit of this man I never met---my great grandfather---and for the three generations of William Thomas Rives that followed him: my grandfather ("Big Bill"), my Dad ("Little Bill", who would be Colonel to you, Sir), and my big brother Tom, who died of cancer during his senior year of high school when I was sixteen.

Will T. Rives saved a girl from a most certain and tragic death had he not rescued her from a speeding horse. His heroic act caused him a serious injury that pained him for the rest of his life. Apparently, he contracted tuberculosis and died in a TB ward from a gunshot wound that was most likely a suicide. His gravestone,  lovingly engraved by my father and his cousin, reads: "Warm, Loving, Brave".

The widow of Will T, my great grandmother Kate Marmion Rives, was no shrinking violet. Being fluent in Canary Island Spanish, she pulled herself up by her Texan bootstraps, ran a roadside Mexican restaurant in the 1920s, supervised hotel chambermaids, and worked for the El Paso Chamber of Commerce. She must have been a force to be reckoned with, and was apparently a character to boot.

I learned from my father, a stellar family genealogist, that I am 11th generation Texan and that some of my people came to "Tejas" from The Canary Islands of Spain (when Texas was still a part of Mexico called Tejas).

I remember turning ten years old in the Texas Panhandle in a small town called Canyon where my family of six lived for a year before we had to move on, as was the Army way. Nearby is Palo Duro Canyon, which Texans fondly refer to as "The Grand Canyon of Texas". Keith and I visited both Palo Duro Canyon and the town of Canyon on this trip and I got to visit our old family home and take a jolly walk through memory lane. Here I am in a lively video clip sharing some happy childhood memories in front of the old house, nearby which is the park and swimming pool where we played and swam as kids, all of which are still thriving and remain just as I remember them!





When we were kids and moving just about every year, we almost always stopped in Denton, Texas to visit my grandparents. My Dad and his only sibling---my Uncle Tim Rives---share the same birthday, September 22---but 17 years apart! Tim was closer to us kids in age than he was to my Dad, and my brothers and I really looked up to him, cool superstar high school football player that he was. Here we are together on his Denton, Texas ranch from a visit in 2009. Keith and I are glad we visited the Denton Rives again on this trip, getting to know each other more and sharing in depth about each other's lives, reflecting back on some hard family times and what got us through. We also watched the Super Bowl in its entirety!

Paying homage to Texas would not be complete without including my parents. (Please note that my mother is not a Texan but a New Orleanian, so her saucy side of the family is a story for another time). We are grateful for our relatively frequent visits to see my folks, especially on this trip when our rig needed time-consuming, expensive repairs during which they put us up and put up with us! My parents have lived in an active retirement community called Sun City outside of Austin for more than a decade where they are thriving in many ways. They model intentional community for us and we are grateful that they are so happy and well connected to a really nice network of kindred spirits. One day, we will be too!

---Mary

Adios El Paso, Bienvenidos a Columbus!

Bureaucratic runarounds were the story of our lives yesterday morning in old El Paso, Texas. Wanting nothing more than to obtain our Texas drivers licenses and return to New Mexico as soon as possible, we were rejected and sent on several errands to obtain the necessary legal documents which were key to our desired goal.

After much ado, we were indeed given our temporary Texas drivers licenses, severing the final legal tie to Massachusetts and completing the process of creating our permanent legal domicile in the Lone Star State. With tax returns filed in Massachusetts for the last time, we will no longer pay state income tax (goodbye, Taxachusetts!) , and we can now rest assured that we are 100% "street legal" Texan residents.

Having completed our "work" of the day, we made our way to The Evergreen Cemetery where Mary's great-grandfather is buried. Our next post will detail that visit, along with other Texan reflections by Mary.

Leaving El Paso behind us, we drove the easy 85 miles to Columbus, New Mexico, driving parallel to the Mexican border which was on average approximately 3 miles to our left. The lone stretch of highway was dotted with Border Patrol vans patrolling the area, and we could just imagine the poor souls who die every year of heat stroke and dehydration as they attempt to cross the desert and enter the United States illegally. Whatever your political persuasion, there is no denying the suffering that takes place in the hinterlands between the US and Mexico, and for every person who succeeds in coming to "El Norte" in search of gainful employment and a better life (aka: The American Dream), several die or are apprehended and summarily returned to their homes after a brief (and most likely highly unpleasant) incarceration.

At the end of that long stretch of border highway is Columbus, New Mexico, a sleepy border town of 2,000 souls, a town that offers several cafes and restaurants, a low-key atmosphere, and the lovely Pancho Villa State Park. The park is situated here at the site where, in 1916, General Pancho Villa and a band of Mexicans staged the last ground invasion by a foreign entity on the continental United States. No one is certain what Villa's true intentions were, but the attack was rebuffed and he and his band escaped back to Mexico. Interestingly, even though Mr. Villa attacked the United States and caused a great deal of trouble here in Columbus, there's a lovely state park named after him! What kind of mayhem can I initiate in order to have a park named after me?

The park itself is filled with cacti, flowers, trees and succulent plants, and we are thrilled to be here to rest from several days of long drives since leaving Albuquerque. There's not much to do here in Columbus, and that's exactly the point, and when we're ready we will make our way to City of the Sun, a nearby intentional community which we have been invited to visit in the coming week.

For now, it's time to rest, read, write, bicycle, do laundry by hand, dry it in the New Mexican sun, and enjoy the fruits of 23 weeks and more than 7,000 miles of travel.

Here's a photo of the border as seen from our rig at sunset, as well as a nice video from our campsite. Enjoy!

Palo Duro Canyon

Today we spent half a day at Palo Duro Canyon near the town of Canyon, Texas. Mary lived in Canyon when she was ten years old, and she will hopefully share some thoughts and a few videos and photos from that walk down Memory Lane here on our blog soon.

Palo Duro Canyon is a wild and beautiful place, the second largest canyon in the United States, and is often called “The Grand Canyon of Texas”. It is approximately 75 miles long and 6 miles wide, and 800 feet deep. It was carved into the Texan earth by an ancient river many millennia ago, and the layers of rock and sediment visible in the canyon walls is impressive and breathtaking.

Here are a few photos, videos, and impressions from our hike: 

We had a wonderful drive through the canyon, and a great hiking experience with Tina, who simply came to life with all of the smells and tracks and scat that we found along the red clay hiking trails.

It was a long haul from Georgetown to Canyon---about 450 miles---but it was worth the effort, providing us with a peak hike experience despite the cold, cloudy weather that ended with a blue sunny sky as we exited the park and drove west towards New Mexico!

Miles and Miles of Texas

In our quest to reach Taos this coming weekend, we spent today making our way through hundreds of miles of Texan terrain, leaving behind the mild and sunny climate of central Texas (just when signs of spring have arrived) and barreling along the flat, straight highways into the heart of the Texas Panhandle where huge Longhorn steers grazed along the side of the road.

Small Texan towns are frequently graced with interesting and quirky names. Inspired by William Least Heat-Moon's predilection for interesting town names (he would base his travel itinerary on which towns had the most intriguing or funny names), here's a brief and entertaining list of towns spied along the way today:

• Novice
• Oplin
• Comanche
• Blanket
• Oatmeal
• Zephyr
• Sweetwater  
• Trickham
• Rising Star
• Early
• Tye
• Lawn
• Happy (population 647)

Don't these just sound like they could be the names of horses? Mary bets there are Texan towns named after horses and horses named after Texan towns.

Texas is an idiosyncratic place, a country unto itself in many ways, and a state whose residents pride themselves in their history and individuality. In fact, it is the only state in the US that is also a republic unto itself and could legally secede from the union and be its own country if it chose to! (We know some of you probably wish they would!). There is so much to see, and so many small towns worthy of at least a brief walk along shady arcaded main streets with their false store fronts and interesting Western architecture. If we had the time (which we usually have plenty of), we're sure many colorful conversations could be had if we spent some lazy hours at a few local watering holes and barbecues (like the one pictured below where Keith took a surreptitious photo from his lap), but alas, that will have to wait for another time.

You see, we are on a mission to get to Taos as soon as we can, a mission which has motivated us to make a 360-degree turn and the longest drive in a single day of our trip yet---almost 500 miles! Phew! We actually made it beyond the halfway point to the little city of Canyon where Mary spent a very happy year of her childhood. We've already driven by the home on her old street (which looks just the same but even better), her old school Rex Reeves Elementary, and the pool and playground where she used to swim and play with her brothers and pals. It's nice to see that Canyon has retained its small town feel and that its downtown and infrastructure seem to be thriving. Canyon has one of the lowest crime rates in the state of Texas, not to mention the lowest taxes. Indeed, the general economy in Texas "es mejor" than most states we've traveled through, yet the Southwest still calls us, Mary's eleven generations of Texas roots notwithstanding.

This afternoon, stopping at a Home Depot in some nondescript town for supplies, we were standing outside the rig when a big black pickup truck pulled up, and the windows rolled down.

"Is that all you?" the young man in a baseball cap asked as he flicked the ashes of his Marlboro cigarette out the window, pointing at our rig. "That's quite a truck you got there." The woman in the passenger seat agreed, and the second young man in the back seat grinned and smoked in silence.

Keith strode over to their truck and leaned on the sideview mirror. "Yeah, it's our only home. We sold everything and hit the road. Now we're looking for a new place to call home."

The man in the truck leaned over towards the passenger side and said, "Well, the Texas hill country is one of the most beautiful places in America. We live near the lake about 20 miles from here. It's quiet, no one bothers you. You could live anywhere here and be happy." He took a drag on his Marlboro and his girlfriend nodded agreement to his assertion.

"Well thanks," Keith said. "My wife's parents are in Georgetown and her aunt and uncle are in Denton, so this is about halfway between them. But we're on our way to Taos to visit our son. We might end up in New Mexico, after all."

"Well, that's too bad, but good luck with your trip and all. That's a fine truck you have there." And with that, they drove away.

The rest of the long drive consisted of oil fields, oil refineries, long stretches of open country and low red cliffs, and the area of Sweetwater which claims to be the "Wind Energy Capital of the Country", where massive windmills dot the landscape like multi-armed titans. Meanwhile, the small oil wells (no photos, sorry!) dotting the vast open landscape resembled arch-backed dinosaurs hungrily pumping away at the earth in their eternal quest for crude.

Even though it's easy to feel judgmental of the people who speculate about, pump or invest in the development of crude oil, it's that very crude that powers our rig, cooks the food on our propane stove, and heats our rig to a toasty warmth on a cold night. Oh the irony of it all.

Slowing down to local speed limits as we entered various towns along our route, we saw signs for custom meat processing plants, an auction of "exotic animals", an archery and taxidermy specialist, a rodeo stadium, a gun shooting range, and any number of car lots packed with pickup trucks, diesel rigs, and farm machinery. Intriguing small town shops beckoned to us in almost every place we passed through, but the miles of open road ahead of us had a stronger magnetic pull than the storefronts, sadly enough. Still, the character of the charming towns left us wanting more, and there's no doubt we'll pass this way again some day.

At this writing, we are "boondocking" in the parking lot of the Canyon Holiday Inn Express, the night manager sympathetic with our need for a free and convenient place to park for the night. Mary entered the lobby, told him our story, and he said "I have no problem with that" when he learned that we would sleep in the parking lot and leave early in the morning to visit Mary's childhood home down the street.

At this late hour, the wind blows fiercely and rocks the rig, and the outside temperature is 47 degrees. With plenty of propane, we're safe and warm in our cozy mobile home, and the sounds of a distant train and the traffic on the street in front of the hotel are no obstacle to sleep (especially with ear plugs). After 470 miles of open Texas roads, we'll sleep as soundly as a rancher stuffed with pulled pork at the end of a harvest day.

Howdy from Canyon with love from Mary and Keith.

Next Stop: The Texas Panhandle

Today saw our return to good old Pflugerville, Texas for the final repairs to the rig which will allow us to continue our journey in safety. Two new tires, a new ball joint and a sorely needed alignment now have the rig driving more smoothly, the steering wheel firm and steady in the hand. Although these repairs set us back quite a few hundred dollars (no surprise there), we're grateful that our "wheel estate" is more solid than ever, and this gives us a certain feeling of security for the road ahead.

Since we had three hours to spend while the repairs were being done, we hopped on our bikes, took our lives in our hands, and biked along the I-35 service road to the nearest movie theater to take in the newest Jeff Bridges film, "Crazy Heart". The film, with music by T. Bone Burnett, was satisfying on many levels. Lovely cinematography of New Mexico and Arizona certainly whet our appetites for the next chapters of our journey, and a few tears were indeed shed by us both over this tale of redemption.

Pflugerville, movies and rig repairs aside, we are now plotting a course north into the Texas panhandle, where we will make a stop to visit the town of Canyon---one of Mary's childhood hometowns. We will then turn west with the goal of reaching Taos, New Mexico on Saturday in anticipation of a joyous reunion with our beloved son Rene and his wonderful wife Bevin. We have not seen them since they left for Taos in August following their wedding, and this is the longest we have ever been apart from our son in his 26 years of life. Although Taos is rather cold in February, we will winterize the rig, make lots of soup and tea, and warm ourselves with the company of two of our favorite people on this earth.

New Mexico is home to a number of intentional communities of great interest to us, and with friends in Taos, Las Vegas (New Mexico), Albequerque and Santa Fe, we are sure to be even further warmed by the familiarity and comfort of old friends.

Texas has been kind to us, and although the Lone Star State is now technically our legal domicile, we feel that New Mexico and Arizona may indeed be where we will discover our new home. These are exciting times for us, and as we leave Texas behind this week, we look towards the West with great optimism and excitement. Off into the sunset to the Wild West we go!

Babylon By Bus

This morning we left beautiful Lake Buchanan and Rainbow Hearth after a wonderful week that combined work, leisure, and the making of a new friend. It was simply a treat to work with Mariah and assist with the  running of Rainbow Hearth, and we leave a piece of our hearts behind at that special hilltop sanctuary where we are certain to return.

Diving back into Babylon, we made our way to Pflugerville, a semi-industrial and most un-picturesque suburb of Austin, which is the only place for miles in any direction where we could have a sorely needed wheel alignment on our rig. Noticing that the tires on our third axle were showing signs of wear and dry rot, we also elected to have those two tires replaced, bring to eight the number of new tires that the rig now enjoys. (For those interested in such things, we have four wheels on our drive axle, and two wheels on the front and rear axles.)

Walking around the working class neighborhood off of Interstate 35 behind the garage after dropping off the rig, we noted a community of modest homes---some more ramshackle than others---many of which sported chain-link fences behind which small feisty dogs yapped as we walked by with Tina. Interspersed among the homes were empty trash-strewn lots, several churches, car repair yards and other small businesses. Many of the homes, businesses---and even churches---were actually double-wide or single-wide trailers plunked on a small piece of scrubby land, some more cared for than others. It was an interesting mix, to say the least, and we have learned that many Americans of modest means call such trailers home, although some of this neighborhood were rather worse for wear.

Meandering down one nearby street, a Latino mechanic from the garage drove up beside us, telling us in broken English that the manager of the shop wanted to speak with us. After chatting with him in his native Spanish, we called the shop only to learn that a front ball joint would need to be replaced before the alignment could be done, a delay which would mean a return tomorrow for yet another round of escalating repairs. With a somewhat sinking feeling, we agreed for the ball joint to be ordered, and resigned ourselves that another day in Babylon would be needed.

These transitions from lovely spots of natural beauty back into the world of commerce and American ugliness---"Babylon"---can be difficult, and we often find ourselves wilting under the pressure and tumult of the world at large. Still, humor and levity do sometimes spring forth amidst the difficulties, such as a chuckle being had when we came upon these two vehicles along our walk, vehicles which Mary felt might be pictured right alongside our rig as jalopies worthy of our consideration:

The double-decker pictured above is actually a 1950s London diesel bus, and we imagined retrofitting it for our purposes. Just imagine, a two-story piece of "wheel estate"!

Mary also gave us a laugh by personally demonstrating that everything is bigger in Texas, even the cans of beer found on the side of the road.

So, after a dinner reunion with Mary's consistently kind and generous parents, we returned to our noisy campground off of I-35 for a night of sleep before returning to scenic Pflugerville for one more round of mechanical repairs. Luckily, Tina will have doggie daycare tomorrow with Mary's mom, allowing us to go to a movie while our rig is in the shop.

The return to Babylon is not always easy, and we go to sleep this evening with the dull roar of the interstate to lull us into dreamland, where we may very well hope to hear the gentle lapping of the water on the shores of Lake Buchanan. Meanwhile, the ceaseless traffic on I-35 flows on.......

Valentine Delight: Signs of Spring in Texas

Valentine greetings to all! Here are some photos from Valentine's Day at Rainbow Hearth, where we are completing a week's stay and work exchange.

Sunflower sprouts in full blossom

A curious deer not far from our rig (close-up thanks to our new camera)

A vulture looking for springtime prey

February flowers in Texas

A Texan bee hard at work

Flowers and cacti

A smiling Mary

Keith and Tina at Medicine Rock

Fifteen Weeks!

Today marks 15 weeks---three-and-a-half months---since we left Western Massachusetts. We write this post by candlelight, with the starry Texas night all around us. After what seems like weeks of clouds and rain, the sun broke through late this afternoon over Lake Buchanan here in Central Texas. We hear that the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where we recently spent a few days, just had seven inches of snow. Our son Rene said on the phone this evening that the New England winter has been chasing us since we left. Perhaps we've finally escaped its grasp.

There is so much nature around us, and maybe the return of the sun---to our delight---brought many of earth's creatures out into the open today. In the course of one day, we were fortunate to see a roadrunner crossing the road, a family of wild pigs running along a river bank, a large red fox (perhaps the largest we have ever seen), vultures, a large snake, and hundreds of robin redbreasts who seem to be wintering here at Lake Buchanan.

Here's a photo of a roadrunner pilfered from Google images ("Beep beep!"):

And here's a photo of the wild pigs shot by an excited Mary just this afternoon:

Keith, who has a real snake phobia, is happy to not mar this blog with a photo of a snake, but the one that he and Tina disturbed by the shore of the lake was about two inches in diameter, dark, and probably three feet long.

We're now back in our rig, parked in a lovely spot on the hill above Rainbow Hearth. This weekend, we'll be doing food prep, dishwashing, and otherwise helping our new friend Mariah care for an inn filled with guests escaping to enjoy a Valentine's weekend in the countryside.

With no electricity hook-up, we're using our solar-powered batteries, candles and battery-operated lanterns here in our cozy little home. Luckily, our fridge runs on propane and keeps our food nice and fresh without the use of electricity.

As we said earlier, the stars are bright tonight in the clear Texan sky. Tina, bless her heart, is exhausted by it all, and sleeps at our feet as we open mail before finishing watching the Wim Wenders film, "Paris, Texas".

Stay tuned for more tales from Mary and Keith's excellent adventure!

Prayer Flags

This is a view of the Tibetan prayer flags at the top of Medicine Rock at Rainbow Hearth. Many people come to the Medicine Rock for healing and prayer. There are specific instructions for walking the medicine wheel, something we hope to do before we take our leave of this special place.

Rainbow Hearth, Continued

Our stay at Rainbow Hearth has been relaxing and healing, and we're very grateful to Mariah Wentworth, the kind proprietor, for allowing us to stay in the beautiful and luxurious  Blue Heron Suite in exchange for a comparatively small amount of work on our part. It's a really nice break from the rig, and a special treat to work alongside Mariah.

One of Mariah's passions is the growing of organic sprouts, and Mary very happily helped sort a variety of sprouts yesterday afternoon: sunflower, buckwheat and alfalfa.

In order to make an extremely healthy and nutritious sprouted bread, Mariah sprouts wheatberries and then grinds them through an ingenious hand-cranked machine invented by a brilliant acquaintance. This grinding actually creates the unleavened dough from the sprouted wheatberries. It's also an incredible upper body workout!

The bread (no photo---darn!) then sits in this custom-made oven for two-and-a-half hours. The oven was originally created to run off of a car battery while driving, a solar panel, or simply through a DC-AC converter. If only we could electronically embed the smell, texture and taste of this incredible bread for y'all to experience.

Here's a photo of the dining room at Rainbow Hearth. The porch on the left side faces the lake, of course.

This afternoon, a very happy Keith was the recipient of outstanding bodywork by Mariah, who uses retrofitted power tools (think sander and jig-saw) and hot rocks to coax the stress out of hurting muscles. Keith has been in pain for more than five years, and this bodywork actually left him pain-free, at least temporarily.

The weather here at Lake Buchanan is cold, rainy and dreary today, with temperatures hovering in the upper 30's. This weekend, temps are expected to rise into the lower 50s and the sun is forecast to make an appearance on Saturday and Sunday! The sun will be welcome, and we'll soak up as much of it as we can. It's been rather cloudy and rainy since we arrived to Texas (with the exception of a few days here and there), and that golden orb will be quite a sight for so many sun-starved Texans!

Tina is pretty content here, tolerating the resident dog and cats fairly well. She sleeps most of the time, and rarely wants to go for a walk. She's a little road weary, as well, and she told us she'd like to simply stay put for a while!

Tomorrow, we move out of the Blue Heron Suite in preparation for a long holiday weekend and many guests here at Rainbow Hearth. We'll move back into our rig which is parked on a concrete slab up the road on a neighbor's land. It's a pleasant twenty minute walk, and the property is on a hill overlooking the lake. There's no electricity or water, but we'll use our solar panels and generator to run the show as we each take shifts serving guests, preparing food, making beds, and otherwise help Rainbow Hearth hum along.

Texas Cacti

Rainbow Hearth Sunset

We're back at Rainbow Hearth Sanctuary and Retreat Center on Lake Buchanan in Central Texas, where we're doing a short-term work exchange and visit.

Here are some photographs of a beautiful sunset over the lake last night just after our arrival. Some of the photos almost feel more like color field paintings than photographs......