HarringtonTravels5: Letter 1 Waurika, Texas, New Mexico

Thursday, March 15, yes this was mid-March as promised to everyone. It is always a surprise to others and to us that our departure creeps up on everyone. This year it certainly crept up on us as we had so many appointments and obligations to meet. Finally on Wednesday we had the whole day. Work, work, work, then the some on Thursday as we made sure all the electrical plugs were pulled, except the refrigerator and two night lights. We also turned the water off at the street and the gas in the house.

About 12:30 we rolled out to stop at Discount Tire for an air pressure check on all eight tires. Finally at 1 pm we were on the road.
175 miles later we found our Corps of Engineers park on Waurika Lake, near Waurika, OK and enjoyed the pot roast Olivia made that morning. Exhausted, you bet.

Friday, March 16, we went to the Jefferson Co courthouse to search for records of the section of land in which we have mineral rights. After spending several hours with the delightful clerks and two gentlemen land men, that were so helpful with all the heavy books, we came away with copies of the indexes of land documents. We headed over to section 32 to get an up close view of what was happening.

Saturday, March 17 we vegg’d until about 2 then drove into town for cappucino where the cashier told us of a good steak house and another fish house. We drove to the first which was closed, then on to the fish house, where we pigged out on fried food. Back to the trailer we continued to rest.
We viewed a

beautiful sunset from the trailer.

Sunday, March 18 we followed many United Methodist Church signs into Waurika to find they served
Breakfast at 9:00, Sunday School at 9:30 and church at 10:30, too bad we slept too late for breakfast.
Following church we drove back to the mineral rights and did get a look at
some of the wells on section 29. Look past the cows to the far hill. The wells might encroach on our rights, so we hope they will pool this area.

Monday, March 19 back to the courthouse to make more copies of sections 29, 30, and 31. Olivia asked around and found Ty Phillips. He was a real gentleman, he took off his hat before shaking Olivia’s hand, when we met and said goodbye. He is the county commissioner for the Ringling area who just happens to own part of Section 32. He lives south of that section. He told us one of his grandparents or uncles was Don Burton. Was he kin?
Olivia looked up Uncle Lon’s will to find a big thick folder. In it was mentioned some people we don’t know.
All of the index copies to deeds had to be cut and pasted to get a whole sheet together, so the afternoon was cut and paste, then highlighting the pertinent information. This was a good project for the rainy afternoon.

Tuesday, March 20 it was raining when we woke up, but by the time we were ready to roll, the sky was clearing. We drove west in Oklahoma to cross the Red river just before Vernon, TX then 120 miles west on highway 70. We had not driven this road before and it was so nice. We saw the towns of Thalia, Crowell, Paducah, and Madador. The first 30 miles we met 30 cars. There were less after that. We had the road to ourselves and it was good paving. What a delight. Our destination was Floydada and a free city campground.

We found this campground on Olivia’s new app “Camp Where.” It cost $4.99 but paid for itself this night. It lists city, county, state, and national campgrounds. Of course not all are free, but there are a bunch of free sites in west Texas. We visited one in Littlefield. The map version has all the campground icons, then gives lots of information about each one.

Wednesday, March 21 we drove on to Levelland, TX and another free city campground. These are wonderful sites to visit the towns. This time we visited

Olivia’s cousin who shares interest in the Oklahoma mineral rights. We met them many years ago at a reunion in Lubbock.Jim & Robbin took us to eat at a great Mexican food restaurant. We hosted them for dessert and looked over the papers we had from Oklahoma. They are retiring in December and plan to hit the road like we do. They will make great traveling buds. Hope they join us when they start traveling.

Thursday, March 22, we woke up to totally clear skies, just a little wind, but by the time we were on the road, we had a crosswind. Heading west, then south to Tatum, we passed the iron worker, that started all the metal cowboys we see everywhere.
On further we reached Roswell, home of little green men. Everywhere we looked we met up with them.
Fred says, “Send this to Bobby”, our son-in-love who is positive the green men came to Roswell. Even Walmart had painted windows welcoming the green men.

In fact, we ended up staying on the Wal-Mart parking lot, where we met a young family from Washington state. He is a photographer. They have three small children. They spend several months of the winter traveling while the children are young and he can photograph on the road. If we get to their town we will look them up.

We visited several shops then ate at the Capitol Café, where Olivia had blue corn tortillas with green sauce. It was hard for her to stop half way through to save some for left overs. New Mexico green sauce is to die for.

Friday, March 23, we struck out through Billy the Kid and Smokey the Bear country, across the desert north of White Sands Missile Range and Trinity site (1st Atomic Bomb test) to Socorro. After gassing up we drove west to the almost ghost town of Magdalena. We parked in a pitiful Passport America RV park, but it had full hookups. No service on this road, not even cell service. While taking our walk we were welcomed by a

metal cowboy and were invited to a party at the only store we saw open. It was a print shop that specialized in the old way of printing. One couple from Oregon were there to help demonstrate the
old press.

Magdalena is an interesting town. During its mining and railhead heydays it had a population of over three thousand. Today there are many deserted buildings. From first blush, you might call it a ghost town. But, upon closer examination, you realize there are several hundred full time residents. Some are tucked away in renovated old buildings. Many of them retired. The pace of life is slow here. Fred met and visited with a gentleman who retired here. Has was educated as a geologist, but his last career was as a mapping programmer for Microsoft in Seattle. Shortly after moving here he suffered a closed head injury while biking in the mountains and then spent a year in hospitals and recovery in rehab. He has virtually no memory before 2002, but seems to be coping well.

Saturday, March 24, it wasn’t far until we were sidetracked to see the VLA—Very Large Array. We both knew our country was progressive in looking into outer space, but we didn’t know about this observatory. These disc’s were huge and rotated 90 degrees while we were visiting the information center. We took pictures of some of their displays for those of you interested in reading more about this project. We know of several of you who will enjoy reading about VLA. It really boggled our minds.

Just a little further down the road was Pietown, or PIE-o-neer” town. One of the first residents couldn’t make a living mining, so started making pies and they are still making them and we sampled a slice of Almond Joy pie.
From the time we left Waurika we had been driving almost due west and we had the road to ourselves. These little US highways have been well maintained with a good shoulder and many roadside parks. We stopped in one that had several picnic tables off the road and thought about spending the night. We wanted to go a little further so continued on.

Just inside Arizona we turned south at Springerville. North of Alpine we found the nicest forest camp, until we drove in and found the turnaround was full of snow. Poor Fred had to back around a 90 degree turn, then up hill to turn around and get out. There were several spots we found would hold us if we had been headed the opposite direction. So on down the road.

In Alpine we found there was another forest camp east of town. It was getting late for us—5 pm. As we approached the sign said, “Open.” We wound around to the back of Luna Lake and found the gate closed. There was a turn around and we considered staying in it, but Fred wasn’t happy with it, so we went back to a forest service picnic site we had passed near the highway. There were no signs telling us we couldn’t stay so we set up camp.

Sunday, March 25, we awoke to find our "potty pedal" was broken. It wouldn’t flush! Thank you God for placing us in this camp spot as we were only a short walk to a very nice, clean pit toilet. It didn’t take us long to start making calls. Even though Good Sam’s emergency service is for enabling us to get to a repair shop, and we could drive, the lady was so nice to research repair places near us and on our route. The first one was in Springerville and after making several calls we chose the closest. He could fix (probably replace as ours is old repairing is iffy) our potty later the next day. We had planned a day of rest so we took advantage of the time. The weather calls for winds in the 50 mph range starting Wednesday. This was Sunday, so we hope to complete the repair and be gone from the area by then.