Austin to Las Vegas PubCon Run Day Two

Day Two - Junction, Texas 

9:00am

We survived the night and there is great rejoicing.  “Yea”.

Almost nothing compares with a beautiful West Texas morning!

Starting out we decide to pass the time by counting one of the few things we can see, roadkill.  Afterall, there are portions of highway where we see more roadkill than cars.  That could mean there are no cars and/or that there is a lot of roadkill and in this instance it’s a bit of both.  Not only did we count roadkill we began to classify the dead as well.  We started with the simplified categories “big” and “small” but to make our statistics that much more interesting “big” was renamed “deer” and “small” was greatly expanded to include; skunks, jackrabbits, armadillos, raccoons, and the slightly troubling “not able to determine”.

11:00 am

We’ve stayed pretty consistent with our roadkill counting but our “kills per mile” is dropping as we have passed 3 different state government tucks that are removing deer from the road.  One pulled off the road just in time for us to be able to switch lanes and avoid re-hitting a particularly grisly scene.  It’s amazing to think that within 120 miles there could be three different people patrolling the road for roadkill.  There’s no question that they are needed but they really are mucking up our statistics.

11:05

We have apparently run out of the clean up crew’s “sphere of influence” as we have passed two deer within 4 miles of each other.

11:15

Stevie Ray Vaughn begins singing, “do it to me like I know you could so I can do it to you baby like a Texan should” over the speakers.   Oddly, even though we are Stevie Ray Vaughn fans and in Texas while he sings of being a texan we feel no less alien here.

11:20

First restroom stop – and none too soon.

11:45

Back on the road and we seem to have run into skunk country or just found a particularly dumb family of them as we have passed 3 on the side of the road in the last 5 minutes.  Also notable, we see our first “identifiable” squirrel.

12:05

I introduce Adam to C.W. McCall a purveyor of 1970’s trucker music.  The reaction is acceptance if not actual interest.

12:20

LUNCH at Fort Stockton.

1:05

Back on the road.  We’ve gone 200 miles roughly and the tally so far is:

• Deer: 20
• Small Animals: 47
• Jack Rabbits: 6
• Armadillo: 1
•  Skunk: 11
• Raccoon: 2
• Squirrel: 5
•  Bird: 1
• Not Classifiable: 21

Just to be clear – this only takes into account the animals seen on our side of the freeway.  There is another 2-lane 1-way road headed the other direction with its own road kill that we have not been counting within our numbers.

1:45

Right before Stockton there is a noticeable change in the landscape we are driving through.  Instead of a variety of small to medium size hills and small shrub trees we now find ourselves in a very flat land that seems to have only sagebrush and the occasional shrub tree every 10 miles that must have gotten lost.  Also outside of Stockton we notice that this area seems generally bereft of any road kill.  This begs the question whether the clean up crews are much more motivated here or that even the animals don’t come into this part of Texas.  Adam votes for the latter.

3:00

We have become concerned about our road kill count.  While there have been some small animal sightings here and there but it’s much more inconsistent and there have been almost no deer.  If this keeps up the rest of the day’s drive will seem incredibly long with no “entertainment” to distract us.

3:22

Yet another excited cry of “road kill ho” only to discover it’s just another ^&%*%$ piece of tire lost by a trucker.  Sad to think you can miss road kill but we do.

4:20

El Paso.  Last year when we made this same trip it was nighttime when we went through.  We looked up on my phone’s browser and were surprised to see that the population was 600,000.   Going through this year in the daytime makes it easy to believe as we can see the city stretching out much further than we realized.

5:15/4:15

Back on the road after gas, food and a quick stretch of the legs.  Earlier this year Adam and some friends had a “wee keg tour” involving the small Heinekin Draught Keg and we buy one so that we can have a “wee keg southern tour”. Don’t worry the keg was locked up in the back of the truck.

We just crossed into a new time zone so we’re back to 4:15.  Whilewe were stopped we tried to figure out where to try and stop tonight.  We’d love to make it to Tucson but that would likely mean another 5 1/2 hours and that might be a little more than we are up for. 

7:30

It’s raining.  Not misting, sprinkling or dripping, but raining hard which really compliments the wind and darkness that also recently joined us.  The rain must have gotten lost as I’m sure it never rains in Arizona.

9:00 Wilcox, AZ
Wilcox is a town of less than 4000 people whose claim to fame according to Wikipedia is being the home town of Rex Allen.  Turns out Rex was an actor in the 40’s and 50’s specializing in westerns which was easy to do then given westerns were very popular.  We checked into a Best Western only to find out that the wireless internet they assured us they had was not working well.  After some negotiations we were able to move to two “suites” which were closer to the signal source.  Using the word suite for the rooms seemed like an exaggeration to me but they were nicer than the standard room we were in.  Through sheer dumb luck Adam found himself in the “Rex Allen Suite” while I was stuck with the “Honey Suite”.  I found no evidence of any bee activity and there was no complimentary girl waiting in the room whose job it was to call me honey so I was confused.  Suffice it to say, I was bitter about not getting the suite named after Wilcox’s favorite son.