The Road Trip, part 22 and last

Day 21 -- Van Horn to Austin, home at last

While Val was outside prepping the car, Carson awoke, sat up, and asked, "who put me in this hotel?"

On the road again, the very tail end of the Rockies finally petered out in west Texas, leaving little more geography than shallow plateaus and long valleys, through which I-10 plowed placidly. We cruised along, making good time, a little over 450 miles to make on the day. The terrain was repetitive and, other than stopping for gas, we had little interest in anything but getting home to Austin.

And then we approached mile 285 (I-10 counts upward going east). Somewhere around here, we spotted wind turbines to the north, atop the ridges and plateaus, and most of them were in service, spinning languidly. At first glance, I counted 18 turbine towers.

Then we spotted more to the south, a bit more distant.

And then, passing around one ridge to the north, we spotted more turbines. MANY more. We quickly abandoned all intents of counting them -- this wind farm was MASSIVE. Ridge after ridge, plateau after plateau was topped with multiple turbines, most rotating. We saw more to the north, where the ridges happened to be closer to the highway, but there were plenty to the south as well. At a guess, we saw over 300 towers, and no doubt there are more of them further distant, beyond the sightlines of the interstate.

Wow. We buy green wind power through the Austin power utility. It costs a bit more today, but locks in our rate for 15 years, and it almost certainly is coming from this huge wind farm. I thought it a beautiful thing to see. And, clearly, it is growing. As we drove along I-10, we saw several components going the opposite way -- two turbine blades, one spindle nose cone, one blade rotor, two spindle housings, and probably we missed other parts as stretches of highway went behind rock formations. Seeing the parts up close, driving by, gives a better sense of scale than the working turbines in the distance, and they are huge.

The wind farm finally appeared to end after at least 25 miles along the highway.

We broke for a late lunch, then made our final push. Finally leaving I-10, with about 110 miles to go, our last road into Austin was Route 290. This winds through Texas Hill Country, through historic (and touristy) Fredericksburg, where we picked peaches, and Johnson City. Along the way is the Lyndon Baines Johnson National Historical Park, the ranch of the former president, now complete since the mansion was handed over to the National Park Service after the death of former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson in 2007. The park officially opens on August 27, 2008, the 100th birthday of the late president. We haven't visited since before Lady Bird died, and so haven't seen the mansion. Maybe some day soon, but certainly not today. Home awaits.

We reached Austin at last, and of course -- and especially being a Friday evening -- the traffic immediately got wretched. I had wan hopes of getting to our post office to pick up the mail, but we missed it by 15 minutes. I made a quick stop for a gallon of milk, a necessity for sure, and made the final turns toward home. Not 100 feet from our driveway, we encountered one of our favorite neighborhoodies, Miss Ruth, who walks about several times daily, treating pets and wild animals on her travels. (Twilight knows her on sight and is an unabashed mooch for kibble.) We spoke a few minutes, general catching-up, then, at last, pulled into our driveway and parked,. Ruth joined us and talked some more. Twilight mooched kibble by acting cute. Central Texas got some rain while we were away (including today), and the withered lawn we had left behind was deep green if not quite lush. I'm going to have to pull out the mower sooner than I expected.

Val and I unloaded everything into a heap in the living room, turning the Civic back into a passenger car again. Still have to take the roof racks off, and it needs a good washing and has earned an oil change soon. Final tally: 3601 miles, almost all in the service of the trip, getting from here to there and back again. Incidental side trips were few. Good little Civic!

Unpacked, kids bathed, one by one we drifted off to sleep. In a rare turn of events, I was the first one down.

And that was our summer road trip. Nothing drastic, nothing transformative, just a good time, fun, with interesting but mercifully uneventful journeying, flexible (we didn't execute at least half of our original plans, but that was fine by all), and more relaxing than not, seeing a generous amount of the large and varied place that is America.

(General note: now that the text is complete, I'll be going back, adding pictures (we have over 1500 to sort through), links, and some basic editorial cleanup. So this entire series will end up richer in detail, but I hope you've enjoyed it so far.)