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Published: July 16th 2019
We were up early again this morning, but for some reason it took us a while to get moving. Perhaps it was the great breakfast at La Quinta…better than average…cheese omelets and thin and delicately crispy bacon. Just ask Beamer. He had his share of both.
We got on the road at 8 AM and attempted to follow the onboard GPS to I-20, which was not far from the hotel, but we missed the first turn and ended up having to find a place to turn around. Steve chose to drive down a side street and, by chance, it took us to a place I had read about but forgot to look for yesterday. The road led to UTPB (University of Texas at Permian Basin) and what did we find, purely by accident? A replica of Stonehenge. And the minute I spotted it I had an OMG moment. It is a little smaller than the original, about 14% shorter, and it only took 6 weeks to put in place, with the help of tractor trailers, unlike the original which took a reported 2000 years (according to Wiki). But it was very interesting to see. The pinkish limestone slabs made for
some really good photos in the early morning sun. See photos. Sometimes the best things we get to see on our road trips result from veering off the beaten path or making a wrong turn. Something led us there…hmmmm…Twilight Zone.
As we eventually made it out of town, we came to realize that Odessa sits on a massive oil field. I am talking MASSIVE. For miles and miles along I-20 and as far as we could see both to the north and the south, we saw thousands of oil pumps. So, tonight I did a little research and discovered that we were over the Permian Basin which is an oil field that is 250 miles wide and 300 miles long. The actual size is 86,000 square miles. They have been drawing oil and natural gas from this basin since 1993. And they are still drilling. We saw many drilling platforms in the process of poking more holes in the ground.
Now, one might think that this area would be affluent, with beautiful homes in richly manicured communities, but we saw none of that. What we saw was a lot of machinery and trucks and endless businesses housed in
steel buildings, and all of which were there to support the oil industry. The homes that we could see from the interstate were not only modest, but in many respects run down, including a lot of old and rusting mobile homes nestled between scrubby desert plants, falling down tool sheds, old pickup trucks, and such. It looked like a depressed area. I don’t know who owns this land and what locals might be working in the fields, but I do know that many of the workers come from somewhere else and live in hotels and in RV’s…we met some of them. Not every town was like this today, but many were.
All of this is existing in some of the most beautiful topography in this country. The desert, with it’s pink soil offset by the silver and green sage dotting the landscape, is bordered on the south by a mountain range shrouded in a purple haze. Steve tells me this is the south end of the Rockies. And on the north are pink mesas, with their rocky walls and green sage adornments sprinkled all around. And under a bright blue sky, broken only occasionally by fluffy white clouds, it
was a feast for the eyes.
We followed those mountains all the way to El Paso only to discover that they are actually in Mexico. We were driving within a mile or two of the Mexican border. In El Paso we climbed up a mountainside to an overlook to get a broader view of the city. And from our vantage point, we could see the border crossing, as marked by this huge red X sign. With the help of a zoom lens we could see the cars and trucks crossing the Rio Grand, and the “wall” that marks the border line. From there it appeared that El Paso was a huge city, but much of what we were looking at was actually Ciudad Juarez, the large city on the other side of the border. See photos. By the way, it was 104 degrees in El Paso today. But, as they say, it was a dry heat. Yup.
We continued on our way to settle for the night in Silver City, NM. We will be here for two days. Tomorrow we plan to go see the White Sands National Monument.
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Kelli kernkamp
non-member comment
We missed all of this!
Yesterday’s blog and today’s educated me royally. I now know when driving thru Texas, don’t take I-35. We visited friends in Harlingen in mid 90s. Took I-35 all the way up to Minnesota and you can be sure we never saw any of these interesting things. Always thought Texas was big and boring. I so enjoyed reading about oil drilling and the massive rock formation. Have a good day tomorrow. Hi Steve.