Notes from the Road - Day 2

1/31/04 10:45pm Denver, CO

A caveat to yesterday’s lesson: it depends on the city. The downtowns of major metropolises are not known for cheap rooms.

I hit the road out of Amarillo about 9:45am this morning. I considered heading over to Palo Duro Canyon, said to be the second largest on the continent after the Grand Canyon, but I was itching for new terrain, and I knew I’d have to get past Vega to see any. Unfortunately, my head still wasn’t on straight from last night, when I crossed the length of Amarillo three times looking for a hotel bargain. I missed the turn at Vega and had to turn around to find it. I might make it back to Palo Duro, as Amarillo’s the only place I’m likely to come through on my way back to Dallas that I will have already seen.

For several miles north of Vega, the terrain began to resemble New Mexico again, with rock formations, deep gullies, and sparse vegetation, but then it flattened out again and led into a couple of big oil towns. One of these, Dalhart, had several businesses with the word “XIT” in the title, and I was almost convinced I had the town’s name wrong when I saw the sign for the XIT Historical Museum. I wondered if maybe it was an Indian word, but it turns out that it’s not a word at all.

XIT was the name of a ranch that had the largest fenced range in the world, from the 1880’s to the 1910’s. It was comprised of 3,000,000 acres of the Texas panhandle that stretched across 10 counties. In fact, some people believed XIT was an abbreviation for “Ten In Texas”, using the Roman numeral X. The real reason it was called XIT was stranger still. It was thought to be a brand that could not be altered by cattle rustlers. The brand on each cow was done in five applications of a straight line: 2 for X, 1 for I, and 2 for T. Other brands were sometimes altered to steal cows from other ranchers by adding lines or curves to the existing brand. In fact, one rustler tried to pull this on the XIT ranch after finding some of the crossings of the “T” at a downward sloping angle. He must have fancied himself an artist when he added a bunch of connecting brands to turn it into a star shape. This could not have been fun for the cow.

In 1875, the Texas State government was in the market for a new capitol building, so they eventually agreed to give the 3,000,000 acres to the Farwell family in exchange for the Farwells spending $3,000,000 on the state’s new capitol building. The legislature got into a pinch because the old capitol burned down in 1881. The deal got even better for the Farwells, since they were to make the capitol out of red granite stone. It was believed that granite would cost more than other possible building materials, but one of the Farwells discovered it would actually cost less. He kept this to himself and pocketed the money saved. The capitol building in Austin is still the biggest state capitol, and only Washington, D.C.’s, is bigger. The dome of Austin’s is a little taller than D.C.’s.

The XIT ranch operated from 1885-1912. The last piece wasn’t sold off by the Farwell heirs until 1963. Now, every year there’s an XIT cowboy reunion celebration in the Dalhart area that draws thousands of people. It’s the largest free barbecue in the country. Apparently, cowboys who worked on the ranch still show up, or at least their families do. One interesting thing about the cowboys was that they didn’t wear blue jeans, because at the time blue jeans were associated with menial laborers. Instead, they used a similar fabric colored brown or black to make “ducks”, and that’s what they wear in all those black and white pictures.

The museum covered a surprising variety of things and a great deal of space for a free institution that subsists on donations. It was right across the street from the courthouse. One thing that caught my eye was a real crow’s nest made almost entirely out of pieces of barbed wire. The delightful old woman caring for the museum pointed out to me that there was a statue of a World War II aviator who she’d gone to school with in front of the courthouse. He had died on a joint U.S.-Chinese mission against the Japanese, flying a route known as “the Hump”. What was interesting about it was that the statue was made and dedicated by the Chinese government, and installed in 2002. The Chinese consul came up from Houston for the ceremony, and the statue has a few words etched into it signed by Jiang Zemin. It’s stories like this that give me hope for a better future between countries still trying to get over past conflicts. Nobody outside of this small Texas town ever heard about it, but it acknowledged respect between the Chinese and U.S. that is easily buried on the nightly news. Let’s see more of this kind of recognition.

It was mid-afternoon by the time I made my way to New Mexico’s northeastern corner. I noticed mountains in the distance, and watched for the Capulin Volcano National Monument, which I had marked on my map. Clouds were rolling in, but I stopped anyway. In the winter it apparently doesn’t get many visitors, and I can see why. The cone of the volcano stands 1,300 feet above the plains below, some of which were formed from the 16 square miles of lava flow from the last eruption. It gets cold up there. A two-mile road spirals its way up the mountain to the lowest point on the rim. This extinct volcano formed a cinder cone, belching up and spitting out magma into the air. The winds blowing at the time caused one side to collect more cinders than the other, so it looks a bit lopsided on the top. There are two trails, one along the rim, and the other that goes down to the vent at the bottom of the crater. This was the second volcano rim I had stood on, the other being in New Zealand, but this one was larger and I wasn’t able to descend into the other one, so I took that trail first.

Snow had accumulated in many places the sun didn’t reach including part of the trail, but it wasn’t deep. Still, I pictured myself flat on my back with no one around in the middle of a volcano with a broken arm or leg, then decided to pick my way very carefully across it to reach the viewing ledge at the bottom. It looked as if many boulders of various sizes had tumbled down to the bottom from the surrounding walls, but the marker said they were broken and thrust up from the crater when the vent finally cooled enough to harden and seal shut, trapping too many gases beneath. On my way back up the trail, I noticed the footprint of a wolf in the snow.

Walking up the rim, the first thing I noticed was how cold it really was with the wind gusting over the lip and down to the plains below, where many cinders and boulders from the size of your fist to the size of your house still poked up through the dried grass vegetation like black fleas on a yellow cat. The sun shone through the darkening clouds here and there, but gave no warmth. I pulled up my collar and covered my mouth with a gloved hand to warm my chapped lips. There were many incredible views and I took lots of pictures, but it was the little things that stand out, like the lava formation visible at the base of the volcano formed when the top layer of rolling magma cooled but the liquid underneath kept going until it cooled, followed by the next layer. Picture a stack of pancakes, each one off center farther from the bottom one in the same direction. One marker identified the extensive lichen growth on the rocks as “Time stains”, so-called because the colonies of grey, green, and brownish orange combinations of algae and fungus are believed to be as old as 20,000 years. They secrete a subtle acid that slowly breaks down the rocks into soil, making it possible for plants to take hold, including the capulin plant, Spanish for “chokecherry.”

When I was out of film, I made my way back to my car and took off for Colorado. Part of the Capulin National Monument is in Colorado, and four states are visible from the top. It wasn’t long before I was passing mesas and steppes rising above the plains, formations I had seen from the top of the volcano, but they looked different, more imposing, from this perspective.

The foot of the Rockies rose up, and so did the speed limit. The highest it got in Texas was 70mph, 65 in New Mexico, but in Colorado the interstate speed limit was 75mph. I made good use of it since dark was coming on. I stopped in Trinidad to eat and look around. It was an old town that kept growing and changing, and it reminded me strongly of San Antonio, new buildings mixed in with the old, streets that made no sense. By the time I was ready to go, I’d heard “the weather” was moving in and there was only one corner of the sky unclaimed. I had seen it coming, had even stopped and taken a picture at the Raton peak, a landmark for early settlers, when I saw a cloud that appeared to be caught on an adjacent peak, like a cotton ball stretched out over a finger.

Soon I was witnessing the hardest snow of my life, at least that I can remember. I was only a baby when the Blizzard of ’77 hit my hometown in Indiana. People around me started slowing down, but I thought to myself, “It’s going to take at least half an hour to build up on the road.” Ten minutes later, visibility was no more than a mile and snow completely covered the ground. I couldn’t even see the Rocky Mountains off to the left. The road had come back down to the plains briefly, but then ascended again. I knew the peaks were there, and I could feel the grade of the road, but it was like being underwater and opening your eyes. Particles obscured everything and shapes just faded out in the darkness behind, or appeared from out of the cloud in front of me. Headlights hung like stars in the mist.

Suddenly, we began a sharp descent. The walls of the canyon closed in close enough to be visible and I realized I must be dropping out of the mountains for another stretch. At the same time, my windshield wiper fluid wouldn’t come out anymore. I stopped on the outskirts of Pueblo, CO, and bought some more. It was due for a fill-up, but when I got back on the road, it still didn’t work. I pulled off again and discovered ice plugging the nozzles. Even after I removed the ice, nothing would come out, so I just poured the fluid out of the jug onto my windshield and hoped for a thaw tomorrow.

Colorado Springs went by in a flash, and I couldn’t even see Pike’s Peak because of the storm and the dark. Shortly after that the storm broke, and I saw my way into Denver. Tomorrow I’ll explore the city a bit before moving on up.