A bad ass biker, a beggar and a legend : Roadtrip memories ... Christmas in San Antonio

Lover and I left New Hampshire in October with plans to be in San Antonio by Christmas.  Of course, it wasn't a two month ride, but we had stops to make, and things to see.  Back then we really did love being together.  We spent some time in Tennessee where we attended the most heartbreaking and yet joyful funeral I have ever been to.  It was my friend Nancy's mother.  She was a tough old broad and well loved.  It was  a biker funeral which are always different from any other.  Her's was held at a beautiful national park where everyone who loved her gathered to celebrate the full and giving life she lived.

Those few days I got to spend with Nancy will be cherished memories for the rest of my life.  I could tell you, "she did this" or "she did that", but there are no words that could express the generosity of spirit and her giving, loving attitiude in the face of losing her mother.   She was and is my hero.

We rode on, visiting friends and family along the way.  We spend Thanksgiving at Uncle's farm in Oklahoma and helped an old man remodel his house while we were there.

We were getting gas for our last leg of the trip to San Antonio.  When we walked out of the gas station, we saw two young people, a girl and a boy, sitting on the sidewalk.  They had dredlocks and back packs and a dog.  The girl had a small travel sized guitar.   They were dirty.  Being travelers ourselves and often dirty, we stopped to talk to them.  Lover picked a song on her  tiny guitar and we asked them where they were headed.  They told us they just got in on the train from San Antonio, but they meant to head toward California.  They hopped the wrong train and ended up in Oklahoma.  Lover gave them some money and I gave them my extra pack of cigarettes.

this is not them

We spent a couple of days in Austin, and could have spent several more.  Austin is a crazy, interesting, fun and weird place to visit.  It is not your typical Texas town.  Nothing in Texas is typical but Austin takes the cake.  If you've been to Austin, you know what I mean.  And for anyone planning to visit Austin, here is a hint for you.  They have a fabulous public transit system that covers literally the entire city.  You can pay a few dollars for a day pass and see anything and everything you want without the hassle of parking or, in most cases, even having to walk very far.  There's my plug for Austin .... Keepin it Weird.

 San Antonio was green and lush the week before Christmas.  All the better to explore the historic city on the bike.  As an added treat, my daughters gave Lover and I tickets to Kenny Rogers' Christmas Show at the stunning Majestic Theater in downtown San Antonio.

  

It was a wonderful night for us.  The guest line up included Billy Dean and some beautiful San Antonio school children who helped Kenny Rogers sing the Christmas classics.

When we came out of the Theater, it was like a scene from a Christmas movie.  It was cold for once in San Antone, and the lights, bustling people and silver bells on every street corner made you want to sing "Jingle Bells".  As Lover and I made our way back to the parking garage, we passed a store front with a man huddled inside sleeping.  He was shivering.  Lover reached into his pocket and took out a bill.  I never asked and he never told me what it was.  When he reached down to give it to the man, he jumped like it scared him.  Lover said, "It's ok.  Here.  Merry Christmas." and he put the money in the man's hand.  The guy smiled real big and said, "Thank's man, Merry Christmas."

When we got home, Lover played his guitar and sang Christmas carols to me.  We had literally no money that Christmas and he sold that guitar to buy me something.  What it was doesn't matter, but I will never forget what it meant.  Toot-A-Loo!!  Merry Christmas and God bless us every one ...

Gorgeous Red Haired Girl at the Train

I was downtown the other day and we have an old train station and an old train that takes a scenic train trip through the beautiful Arkansas hills.  I didn't take the trip this week but I went to the station because....of course I did, it was my day off and I love trains.  The best thing about going to the station when the train is coming in is all the different people you see.  Of course, it's just a scenic lunch trip, about three hours long, so the folks aren't really travelers but the train station feel is still there.  This time, we got a real treat when we pulled up.  We saw this young lady standing on the platform.

She was simply adorable with her retro looking style and her surprising yet perfect suitcase.  I had to have a picture of her and she was very gracious letting us take it.  I was so excited by her red hair and her awesome suitcase that I forgot to get her name.  So, lovely red haired girl, if you come and see this, please leave a comment and tell us your name.  Her shoes were awesome too and I wish they would have been in the picture.  It made my day on Tuesday and now getting to blog about it has made my Sunday.  Win and win.

Thank you for reading and please visit often to see what suprising people and things I find as I road trip through life both at home and away.

Biggest spider I ever saw!!

He was looking in at me when I went to open the window.

I had to move my blog from the old site, so I copied and pasted most of it over here.  Some of it didn't make the cut, but this big boy came along.  I'm glad I got the picture because he was truely huge.  My friend said he is a writing spider like Charlotte.  I don't know about that, but he is dead now.

I am planning a fantastic hippie road trip this fall, so come back often and read my road trip memories in the mean time.

End of this trip

Hair a mess, feet dirty and smelling like the road.  Great trip :)

I made it home today. Always good to be home but sad comes with the end of a roadtrip. I drove only 5 hours today, so easy day :) Have you ever been just driving along, lost in your own world when all of a sudden you see someone jamming with the radio, dancing in the car seat and singing along like crazy? Well, today, I was that girl. It was a beautiful day and I had the windows down and the radio up. I sang along with the words i knew and I made them up when I didn't. A lot of people smiled (laughed) at me. I was honked at by truckers and all the bikers waved. I had a wonderful time and I even got tooted by a train!

Now the planning starts for the next epic adventure! I will be posting memories in the meantime so come back often!

A plane, a truck and a shuttle bus - Oh My!!! Roadtrip memories

Being in Colorado reminds me of the first time I ever visited here. It was a very long time ago. I flew here. From Tulsa. It was a 45 minute flight and Denver is an hour behind Tulsa so I got to Denver 15 minutes before I left Tulsa. It was easy to fly then. I boarded the plane without so much as a patdown. They didn't xray me to make sure I was naked under there, they didn't search any of my bags and nobody had any interest in seeing my feet. It wasn't a jet, only a prop plane with about a dozen people on it and we could see the ground the whole time. I might have been scared, but I was going to meet my husband who was a truck driver. It was Thanksgiving week and he had to work so I flew out and went on the truck with him. He isn't my husband anymore and I don't think he drives a truck anymore, but just for this story, I will tell it how it used to be. By the time I was off the plane in Denver and into the terminal my husband had my bag and away we went. We took the airport shuttle to the truckstop where his truck was parked and we bagan our drive across the Rockies. I was flabbergasted. If you have never seen the Rockies, you must. No pictures would do it justice.

We wanted to see Yellowstone park but the government was broke and all the National Parks were closed. We also didn't get to see the Grand Canyon for the same reason. We drove through more huge mountians all the way to Bellingham Washington and then back down through Oregon, and California. We spend Thanksgiving Day in Reno. We gambled and ate a very good turkey dinner on the casino buffett.

We weren't able to see any national parks, but I picked up rocks everywhere we went and used them to get an A+ in the earth science class I was taking at the time.

Late on Thanksgiving night, we were rolling through the desert and I was sleeping in the back when my husband started calling me to wake up and come look. We were nearing Las Vegas,

It looked sort of like this but much later at night.

We didn't stop in Vegas because we had places to be. We did however, stop at the Hoover Dam. I have to say again, this was a long time ago. Back then, the highway went right over the dam, now there is a bridge across the canyon. We got there about 3am and it was completely deserted. Of course, the Welcome Center was closed, but there was no security that we saw.

We were there at night and the lights were beautiful.  We parked in the large lot in the bottom right of the picture.  The place
was absolutely deserted.

We never saw one person and no cars went over while we were out there. On one of the concrete pylons along the dam, there was an elevator. It was a strange moment. We looked at each other and he pushed the button to open the door and it opened. We both got on without saying a word. My husband held the door open as we stood there looking at each other in a silent game of chicken, until I stepped out and he followed.

If I remember right, we slept for awhile before driving on to where ever we had to be, maybe somewhere in New Mexico.

We made it home that weekend, and as always we were sad our trip was over. The very first road trip we ever took together, we both literally cried when it was over ... we were very young and it was a great trip. Maybe I will write that one another time.

A bad ass biker and a ghost town - Roadtrip memories

I have spent the first two days of my roadtrip with my children and grandchildren. I am leaving here in the morning. For today I am posting a memory from one of my roadtrips past. It happened in Arkansas and so long ago that I might be the only one who remembers. I was riding cross country with my lover on his Harley and we got stuck behind a wreck or something that stopped traffic. Lover was trying to weave around the cars and trucks to get to an exit.

This exit

He was not a patient man and Harley's aren't made to sit in traffic. We were almost to the exit, passing a fully stopped 18 wheeler, us in the breakdown lane when the trucker suddenly cut his tires out in front of us. That was not a nice thing for him to do. He was at a complete stop and nothing was moving. There was no danger and plenty of room for us in the breakdown lane. Him cutting his tire out suddenly that way could have caused us to go down. Lover was an excellent rider, so he dodged the tire then stopped and got off the bike. Normally I would get off when he got off because it sits lopsided and not real stable when its on the kickstand, but that time I stayed on the bike. There was a confrontation, it didn't come to blows, but I wonder what that trucker told his wife about why he soiled his drawers that day.

We made it to the exit before either the bike or the lover overheated. The exit took us on an old highway and then back to the interstate. The old highway brought us through a little town.

This little town.

Usually, when folks visit ghost towns, they go because they want to visit a ghost town. It's an entirely different experience when you just randomly happen upon one.

The sign we passed, led us to believe the town was inhabited.  Notice the curfew addon.

The sign was obviously quite old. We saw literally no people. Not one person. At first we didn't notice then we both at once realized that nothing was open and most of the stores were boarded up. It was an uncomfortable feeling to say the least. We rode down the main street and our pipes broke the spooky silence like a hundred bikes coming through. At the very outer edge of town there was a store open. An old type general store with well worn wood floors and the oldest working pop machine I have ever seen. We saw a couple of people. We found out that Cotton Plant used to have close to 2000 people living there. Now, nobody. I could go into all the reasons why but none of them would make it any less sad. I am heading out for Colorado at first light. More about that tomorrow.

Santa Fe Trail tracks - A Kansas prairie day

I planned to pull out early and drive the Santa Fe trail across Kansas with a stop in Dodge City because Wyatt Earp is my favorite lawman ever, especially as he was played by the always awesome Kurt Russell.

Of course, that plan bit the dust about 6am when I dismissed the alarm and went back to sleep. But I did drive the Santa Fe trail.

There are many places where you can see the actual wagon wheel tracks and ruts in the mud.  It's amazing after all these years the scars left on the praire from America's migration West are still there for us to see.

Here you can faintly see were the wagon wheels carried the pioneers west.

I ate my lunch right here on the grass.  A lot of the trails and ruts are on personal property where the owners allow visiters.  I got a very "little house on the prairie" feel and could imagine families traveling by covered wagon on that vast and lonely prairie.  Sometimes they got stuck for days in the mud and made some true ruts that have lasted for almost 150 years since the railroad took over as the main mode of transportation west for both people and supplies.

This is the Santa Fe Trail marker at the http://edwardscountymuseum.info/6.html

This is the sod house before it was enclosed to keep it safe from the elements. 

This is the sod house as it looks today inside it's climate controled building.

The museum is home to so much Kansas history that it's a must see for all Kansans and for anyone interested in American history.

Then my prairie day was over and I camped for the night at a beautiful rest area that offered free coffee in the morning.  God Bless America :)