I sent this picture to Dan right after getting a text from him having to do a work thing early (for him). The metal bar structure is the remnants of the wedding makeover the slab from former bunkhouse was given back in October of 2020. Stephanie and Michael got married right there.
A bunkhouse used to be on the spot, only to grow decrepit and collapse in a storm. Some talk is about putting an outdoor kitchen area there, mainly to help with the reunions.
Anywho...
Our summer plans of birthright travels had to be adjusted because of many scheduling factors, but eventually we left the Southland for points east. Well, north of east, and then due cardinally towards sunrise. Off to the Harrison Farm outside of Clarendon, TX, in the panhandle region, for the 4th of July and a work week for Corrie and Peter, her younger brother.
We stopped for dinner that first night at the Roadkill Cafe in Seligman, Arizona, and a memory of a t-shirt my mom had that upset my brother so came back to me when I saw the slogan again: "You kill it, we grill it!" (My brother's cat was run down when we were kids, and the shirt, likely from this same exact restaurant made him sad and angry.)
Outside was the remnants of some Arizona territorial ruins:
And you could explore inside as well. There was also a paddywagon, which Camille enjoyed:
There were a bunch of old rusted-out hulks of cotton gins, tractors and automobiles, and the gins I found confusing: the area, while not the full-fledged Sonoran Desert like on I-10, does not seem conducive to an agrarian lifestyle.
We did the drive there in two days, planning on making the return trip more relaxing with plenty of roadside attractions to be seen and time taken, as we weren't in a rush to get home (that's usually the case).
**
I've had these pictures up on the draft version of this post for nearly two weeks by now. Things have happened, like Cass getting great with his new bike and demanding bike rides all the time (woo-freaking-hoo!); daddy daycare field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits; and a few other various things.
Since I didn't start this right away, the whole post will be a hot mess of sweaty memories and go-nowhere anecdotes, but what can you do?
The first real night we were visiting (by "real" I mean the first night after we woke up there for the first time on the trip; not 'Night Zero', aka 'arrival night') Corrie and I were talking in the bright lights of the Big Barn when we were visited by some kick-ass arachnids:
It was my first time seeing scorpions chilling in the wild, doing their thing. There were four that we saw, all crawling either to or from the large seem in the concrete slabs separating the inside from the outside. None were more than an inch long, which made them quite dainty and cute, but aren't they more dangerous at such a small size?
There were festivities for the 4th in the small town of Clarendon. We were doing the things Corrie had done as a kid on her summer journeys to the Farm for 4ths of July's past. First was a parade, where every float threw candy at the parade watchers.
Once the parade wrapped up, the Patriots Faire was set up at the Donley County courthouse, once dubbed the "Jewel of the Panhandle" once construction was finished in the 1880s:
It is a pretty building.
Next was the turtle race. Er, races, as in plural, because there were four races, broken up by age group of contestants (0-4 years old; 5-8; 9-14; 15 and up). Each race took about 60 to 65 seconds, and they were riveting seconds, I tell you, more exciting than the name "turtle race" may evince.
Each race started after contestants placed their turtles into the hexagon above. That hexagon is situated in the middle of an intersection in town. Once all turtles are in the hex, it gets lifted and spirited away, and the turtles make a break for it, scattering in all directions. The white line drawn on the intersection in the above picture was mirrored along each of the directions of the intersection, and the winner of each race was the first turtle to make it across any one of the lines, essentially the first turtle out of the intersection.
I joked that I wanted to meet the bookie for the event, as I'm sure there was action on the races. Degenerate gamblers are everywhere.
Some of the badass things about visits to the Farm are the sky-views. At night, on the first few nights we were there with a tiny sliver of a crescent moon that set at 9 pm and no clouds, the Milky Way splashed spectacularly across the night's ceiling. Other days, amidst the oppressive heat and humidity of July panhandle-Texas, you could watch the rain pass over the prairie off in the distance, and ust hope it would get to you soon enough, just to take the edge off the heat.
Eventually it would come. Lightning blinks and thunder rattles your guts, enormous water droplets batter everything for tens of minutes, and in the aftermath the day feels much more tenable.
Every once in a while, someone may sit for a quick selfie:
Before a thunderstorm travels through, sometimes you just need to relax in a converted horse trough/swimming pool:
And on a different day, getting a gin-and-tonic break after hours of construction work, mama-bear rocking the cowboy hat to keep the shade going:
While in Rome, or, eh, Texas...the hat was actually quite comfortable and good at keeping the sun off my eyes:
One day, while Corrie and Peter were working the milk barn-to-bunkhouse conversion project, I took the kids to the same playground that Ron, Corrie's dad, went as a kid and took his own kids to. Across the street from it is a cool abandoned old building that Cass wanted to bust into:
I sent this picture to Ron asking about it. He said it was the original Clarendon College building. I told Cass that when he was older, and could drive himself around, he could come back with his cousins ater hours and break in, as long as it was still standing
Other things about the farm's sky: sunsets:
I could litter any Farm post with pictures of sunsets, as we take dozens each day we make it out to see them. The sun set around 9 while we were there in July, so...yikes. Getting the kids down for bed is tough when it's already past their bedtime and the sun is still up in the sky.
Sometimes, after as much gin as we drank in ten days, the night sky yields plenty of cool views, like the following Sisu or, more accurately Trogdor, dragon w/heart pic:
Ron gave me the secret recipe for his marinade for the meat we smoked, and then he and Pete gave me pointers on how to keep the setup going: hovering the temperature between 200 and 250, while also keeping the smoke pure and heavy:
That's not brisket, which is what Ron typically smokes. This time he bought two big-ass pieces of meat, roughly the same size as briskets, but they were NY Strip steak cuts, like the big piece that you cut NY Strips from. Together the pieces cost just over $330, so...don't eff them up!
Thick, billowing smoke...that's what you're looking for. Also, you'll smell like campfire all day, since it takes many hours to finish such a piece of meat.
We did the fireworks on Sunday the 3rd, since some people had to leave the next day during the day. In north Texas, with the humidity that we experienced, it seemed like anything would go. And it mostly did:
I remember when Sacramento outlawed sparklers, so to see some, and have Cass burn some, was pretty cool. Ron had purchased nearly $300 worth of mortars and showering beauties, and we set them all off in the middle of the main driveway. Seeing a nice firework at a professional display is cool, but when you're directly underneath the thing as it detonates is something else.
I even set some tile during the time. Since we didn't have access to a wet saw, I set the twelve pieces that didn't need to be cut. That was a busy day: smoking a huge strip loin roast, setting tile, keeping a few eyes on the kiddos, and making food for each meal. It was a sweaty, campfire-smell day.
Also, I don't have a whole lot of baby/family pictures. Not ere and not i my phone, really, which is weird. Maybe. Mary and Eddie and their twins were there, as well as his daughter Harper. Peter was there the entire time, while Colton, his boy and the same age as Harper, left early with Carol. Rob and his wife Staey were also there for two evenings; they, like the Mary/Eddie contingent, stayed in a hotel in Clarendon. Pictures exist elsewhere, I suppose. (Also, my phone has been trying to make emergency calls in my pocket for months now, and I regularly left it off-person.)
The drive back we wanted to make leisurely. On day two, after seeing a few of the things we wanted to see, we rolled into Barstow before 7 pm, the sun was high in the sky, the thermometer said 115, and we were just over two hours away. So leisurely took a back seat again.
But, on the first day we stopped at a dinosaur museum in Tucumcari, NM, a few miles west of the Texan border. It was awesome. Based on Mesalands Community College's paleontology department's discoveries, the collection of fossils and gear is world class. When mixed with the MCC's art department's bronze casting division, many of the finds are doubly spectacular.
This is the world's best preserved torvosaurus skeleton, found nearby, and is obviously a relation of Tyrannosaurus rex (it is from earlier and is smaller):
The following display enthralled me:
Two creatures locked in a mortal battle. A theropod and a pteranodon. The detail on each is remarkable, and probably aided by artistic license, but anyway: the theropod is the dinosaur and the pteranodon is the flyer, and the plaque starts with, "Is it a bird?" The irony of the battle is that the birds are avian dinosaurs, and the birds descended from theropods, while the fuzz and feather-covered pteranodon is not what the ancestors of birds are.
That night, we stayed close to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. After breakfast we made it to the eastern entrance to the park.
I think I may paint the following picture of the "Painted Forest Inn":
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| With silhouette of Corrie and Camille |
The Painted Forest is the name given to thousands of square miles spread over four states, and the Petrified Forest National Park takes up a square down in the southern tip, like the nucleus of a comet.
There are so many beautiful badlands areas and zones, and the hikes are mostly easy going. We didn't stress doing all of them since we'll be by again in the future, as the drive to the Farm will happen plenty more over the next few years.
The petroglyphs were awesome. From above you can see the pictures that modern humans drew/carved onto the rocks in a specific area, but you have to view them from a sixty feet above:
We went on a hike later on, and it was fantastic:
We even stopped for the "agate bridge":
Maybe at one point you could walk across it, but not at this point. It is being supported by the concrete and rebar, but still, you must stay off.
There was a spot where Rt 66 used to ride directly through the park, and an old rusted out Studebaker marked the original route. At the Roadkill Cafe there had been an old rusted out car, and I felt like now would be a good time to show both:
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| Seligman, AZ |
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| Petrified Forest NP, AZ |
**
I mention in the title that this was an "Alternate Summer."
What I really meant was that this summer has seemed like a collection of fever dreams as we work through COVID and E. coli, days in the car and no air conditioning. Luckily things have been fixed, at least around here. And since we got back, we've finished Stranger Things 4 and the Obi Wan show (that should have been called "Obi and Leia").
To Texas and back, 2022, yo!
great story of your summer. Love the pictures. Thank you.
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