Spent 7 weeks escaping the winter this year, hiking and golfing and driving in circles around the southwest. This will be the last year using the van; in the future Beth and I plan on purchasing a hybrid-probably a Rav 4- and taking our bikes to Air B&Bs and motels around the country then exploring the areas in detail. The first picture is the first tee at a small 9 hole golf course in Jayton, TX, a town of about 1,200 people in the south eastern panhandle. I enjoyed this course because of its varied terrain, making it more interesting than many of the flat, open fairways common in the desert. This course was about two miles from the town which is located 25 miles from the next sizable town in the middle of the Texas desolation. In the same complex were the remains of two baseball fields and playground equipment-evidence that someone 30 years ago had invested a million dollars into their construction, only to be neglected and overgrown decades later. The golf course was being maintained by a few dedicated volunteers, and I could not help feeling saddened by the lost history of the place, where those bold dreams of long ago had become overgrown weeds in an outfield. ( click on the pics to enlarge...)
That neglect is common across the country, as reflected in the abandoned downtown of Anton, TX , north of Lubbock. Except for a Dollar General store, Post Office, City Hall and a school, many small towns in the nation are virtually abandoned. Crumbling houses and storefronts are all that remain, and it is easy to see that most of the population has moved on.
In central New Mexico is the Very Large Array, a radio telescope located far from light and electronic pollution,where astronomers can study pulsars and quasars and novas and other phenomena. Presently there are 27 antennas located on railroad tracks so they can be moved into various configurations, but plans are underway to replace this aging equipment with 160 new ones which will be supplemented by others across the nation. Personally, I encourage this use of tax dollars over weapons and other wasteful expenditures, and the walking tour enabled me a close up view of this far thinking scientific enterprise. The red canyon view was from a roadside rest near the Palo Duro Canyon area, also in the panhandle of Texas. I randomly stopped here and discovered this viewpoint, because Texas has numerous rest stops and some of them offer these wonderful views; the department of transportation actually makes an effort to consider terrain rather than just crowd people into congested places. There was no one else at this amazing site.
The final picture is of the remains of a trailer off the Louisiana coast, devastated by a hurricane-the exact one I am not certain. That area south of Lake Charles has been hit by many storms in the past 5 years. The main lesson seems to be that even huge pylons are insufficient to protect against nature, and most of the people there are now living in travel trailers set on the concrete pads where their homes used to be. That seems to be the wisest option, because climate warming will only intensify the storms. Living in a movable house means that the owner can hook up the truck and move inland until the hurricane passes, then return and set up again.
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