Oct 24, 2006 - Texas Trip Details

One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Any journey that is begun without a plan, as rudimentary and ill-defined as it may be, is destined to failure. There is nothing wrong at all with changing directions or choosing a different path from the one planned. And there is nothing wrong with wandering either, as long as that is your intention. If your plan is to wander, that's OK, and, it is a plan.

A week or two before I decided to drive to Texas, I had plans to drive around Nevada. Just drive up to Carson City, then across the state, East, then down South, back to the bane of my existence, Las Vegas.

That was before I was invited to meet a friend in Texas. Plans change. The only thing constant in the universe is change. What was once meant to be a four day driving tour of Nevada, has become a 7 day trip to Texas. Please do not get me wrong. I am certainly not complaining. There are quite a few things I would like to see along the way. But first, my rough itinerary:

• November 6th, Monday – Pick up rental car in the late PM. Pack.
• November 7th, Tuesday – Leave Vegas in the early AM. Long drive through Northern AZ and West-Central NM. See Meteor Crater AZ and the VLA in NM. Will probably stay in Socorro, NM.
• November 8th, Wednesday – Enjoy the slow ride through NM into TX. Plan on staying somewhere between Socorro and Dallas, TX. Pretty specific, eh?
• November 9th, Thursday – Drive into Dallas.
• November 10th, Friday – Dallas.
• November 11th, Saturday - Dallas.
• November 12th, Sunday – Leave & drive 'til I can't drive no more.
• November 13th, Monday – Keep driving.
• November 14th, Tuesday – Arrive back in Vegas.
• November 15th, Wednesday – Back in Las Vegas (late arrival)

Along the way, I plan to take a LOT of pictures and post them here as I can. And write! Yes, I am definitely going to write a lot on this trip. Primarily I need the practice, and secondarily, It think this is a noteworthy experience that is simply begging to be documented, if for no one else, for me.

So, what am I going to see? A lot, I hope. Here is a rough list, in, as you would guess, rough order:
---Hoover Dam
---Flagstaff (not sure where)
---Meteor Crater
---The VLA (Very Large Array – the largest radio-telescope in the world – as seen in the movie Contact)
---Roswell crash site... maybe
---who knows!!!

What am I going to do in Texas? I don't know, and that's part of the fun. Part of the plan. The most important and exciting parts of life occur at random and are unexpected