Scenes from a 3,000-mile roundtrip

A few sights roll by in almost 3,000 miles of driving across the southeast. I had never driven east to Atlanta to see my parents since I moved to Colorado. That ended this Christmas. I yearned to drive. 

I crossed Raton Pass and bid goodbye to the high country.  Snow covered the plains below the dormant volcano cones of northern New Mexico. Drivers that barreled past me in the Safety Corridor ended up behind sheriffs and state troopers. Oil and cattle odors merge in the air above Amarillo. The city lights and the thin skyline blinked in on the longest night of 2023. 

U.S. 287 feels like one long main street aimed southeast from Amarillo. Every slowdown marks a speed trap. Somewhere in the inky night to the west lies Caprock Canyon State Park, a jewel of the Llano Estacado in the Texas Panhandle. I stayed in Childress, looked for a place to have a drink or bite to eat and found none. Most of the towns along this stretch were just hotels, fast food, and gas stations. 

Fort Worth arrived at daybreak, with a quick cut through downtown to I-20, my road across four more states. In Louisiana, I spotted any number of unusual waterfowl I wished I had more time to observe. I drove through Bossier City, hometown of my friend Dave, and circled the construction in downtown Shreveport. My memory for Mississippi after Vicksburg is slight, as I just wanted to cross the state and get onto Tuscaloosa. I did little exploring there, victim of a 15-hour driving day. 

The return trip spit me out of Atlanta in a rainstorm that ceased at the state line. Daylight intruded around Birmingham, but the sun would not break through till Tupelo. It shone all the way to Fort Smith, through the construction zones of Memphis (do those roads around the River City ever get a break?), the swarming cars headed to Little Rock, the newness of Conway and a respite in Fort Smith. I have already chronicled my NPS stops in other posts, but I had a few observations left to relate. 

Simply Wichita
Just after dark I cruised into Wichita. I dropped my gear and headed out for a brief evening on the town. I was tired but couldn’t ignore my proximity to downtown and Old Town. 

I started at the Hopping Gnome, opting for an ESB that helped me shrug off the road. Less than a mile away was Central Standard Brewing, which had a number of fun sour and Belgian-style experiments on tap. There was more to explore, but I headed back to my room and called it a night. 

After roaming southwest Missouri and eastern Kansas, Wichita was a metropolis. As usual, I only had time for a glimpse. I have that kind of relationship with Wichita. Someday I hope to give it a full long weekend. But I was eight hours from home, and felt it the best place to spare one more night. 

All in the span of an hour

Winter’s reach
I ducked out of Wichita with a rough prairie sunrise that equaled those in the mountains. The flakes fell lightly in Pratt. I stopped for gas, picked up a few grocery items, and sped past the line of trucks before U.S. 54 dropped down to one lane. But the snow that the Wichita weatherman said might dust southwest Kansas proved a little more assertive. The road would turn to sheer ice several miles west of Pratt. Cars had spun out. I slowed down even as my brakes proved useless

 Then a genius in a pickup pulls out into 40 mph traffic going 15. I hit my brakes and nothing happened. I honked and the rube continued not speeding up. The highway’s median was wide enough for a car, so I threw my tired into the snow. Without brakes my speed dropped, but not enough that I passed the rube like he wasn’t moving. He looked at me, oblivious to the world. I swung back into the lane of travel around 25, enough to stay straight on the ice. 

The rube turned off – he risked an accident in bad weather to go a handful of blocks. I still couldn’t understand the urgency. If I had been phone-bound, we would have collided. 

I slowed further on the ice. The number of vehicles that skidded off the road was surprising. The road turned wet again. The line of trucks went on forever.

At the split between 400 and 54, all but one truck turned southwest for Liberal. Suddenly I was alone with the snow-covered fields where cattle grazed. The snow coated bails of hay and crop irrigators on hiatus till spring. The snow fell harmlessly on the road. 

By Dodge City, the snow died. I had no stomach to wait for the museum to open in Dodge City. Someday I would spend that time, just not with home under six hours away. 

I took a leg-stretching break at the Lee Richardson Zoo. Most of the animals were off-exhibit or in heated enclosures. The giraffes were eating heartily, and only the young one took interest in me. I slighted the Garden City zoo in 2023, only managing visits in January and December. 

Plus, with apologies to Truman Capote, I like the feel of the part of Kansas that other Kansans think of as “out there.” 

An eagle-rich coda
The trip’s most awe-inspiring moment came not at a park, but somewhere west of Chanute, Kansas. A day of total cloud cover since 9 a.m. and inconsequential snow till 3 decided to turn sunny. A car half-mile ahead of me stopped suddenly and drove at less half the speed limit. I couldn’t tell why. 

When I saw white tail feathers on a massive bird flying above a Creekside swamp, I wondered no more. The golden hour before sunset highlighted their white head feathers. As I walked up to the tree where the eagle perched, a second eagle sprung off a nearby branch and began soaring. 

Eastern Kansas was not the last flourish of eagles. I learned John Martin Reservoir in southeastern Colorado provides good bird habitat. Last November I spotted a single bald eagle. That afternoon I might have spotted the same eagle in a patch of trees. One patch of skeletal High Plains trees is hard to tell from another, as is a bald eagle at great distance. 

 A car stopped just east of Pueblo in the Arkansas floodplain. Before I spotted it, I knew what the driver was photographing. There sat two bald eagles next to each other in a tree. I should have stopped. After 3,000 miles and with 40 left to go, I had to let this pair of eagles go. 

I might regret skipping that photo, since two eagles on a branch might not be a site I cross too often. But I could feel the pull of home, and knew eagles were active all winter throughout the Arkansas Valley.