The KOA campground outside of Abilene, Texas, has very little to recommend it. It’s scruffy and not particularly well-managed. The afternoon I arrived there, I was feeling scruffy and not particularly well-managed myself.
For days, I had been traveling west on I-20. I planned to connect with I-10 near San Antonio for a straight shot to San Diego. And then shoot up I-5 to Seattle. Not the most direct route, but the easiest and likely the fastest.
And the most deadly boring. Been there, done that. And by the time I got to Abilene, I was seriously dreading doing it again.
The day was gorgeous. Maybe 71 degrees – in late November! I pulled my cot under a tree, lay flat on my back and spent the next hour looking up at:
Now, some people read tea leaves for a hint of their future. Well, I lay there reading tree leaves for a hint of mine. And here’s what they said:
Don’t be a smuck! You’ve got a little time left on this adventure, make the most of it!
So the next day, I veered north toward Lubbock, feeling instant relief the second I got off the interstate. In Lubbock, I be-bopped through the Buddy Holly Museum, and bought my pretty red cowboy boots at Boot City.
From there, I headed for Santa Fe because I’ve always thought I would love Santa Fe.
Turns out, I don’t. It’s all so very tastefully…uniform, in color and design. And red cowboy bots aside, I’m not much of a shopper, so 300 art galleries are 275 too many for me.
The Georgia O’Keefe museum is very cool. And the town is full of other wonderful museums as well.
But I was happy to leave there to explore the much grittier Gallup. I had lost my dread of the long drive home, and was really grateful to those tree leaves for speaking so clearly.
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