On Friday, Mark, Ripley, and I drove to Abilene to visit a library group that Mark works with. We decided to make his work trip a family trip so we could all enjoy the day. It was 81ºF, so needless to say it was a beautiful day and we all had a lot of fun.
It’s only about 200 miles to Abilene, and we took Highway 380 west out of Denton through Decatur and on to Abilene. We could’ve gone down through Fort Worth and taken I-20, but we tend to like the smaller roads, and I’m sure traffic would’ve been worse.
We started out at about 8am, which is early, but certainly not unreasonably so. Traffic right now is terrible on 380 just outside of Denton since they are widening the road, so we puttered through that area on our way out. We are currently reading Polgara the Sorceress, which is a return to David Eddings for us. I’ve been reading his books since I was a kid, and I read them to Mark for the first time a few years ago. I hadn’t read Polgara’s book, or the other campanion novel, Belgarath the Sorcerer, to Mark yet, so we’ve been doing those for our last few long drives. By the time we head to Big Bend after Christmas, we should be moving on to something new. We are pretty quick like that.
We made our first real stop outside of Newcastle at the old Highway 380 bridge there. You can still access the bridge, although not really by car. I’m not sure you’d want to, anyway. From what I can tell, the bridge was closed off and bypassed in 1988, and the new bridge in the featured image was opened to the public at the same time (which makes sense, of course).
It’s a good-sized bridge over the Brazos River, about 850 feet long, and it has been taken over by the local plant life. It still seems sturdy and safe, although it did have cactus growing on it, which I found really interesting. I suppose prickly pear can have really shallow roots, although I’ve never had occasion to think on the subject before. A quick Google search tells me that they have wide-spread, shallow root systems, which are really great for soil erosion. Well. Today, I learned….
At any rate, while it may seem from the photographs that the river is pretty dry, this is actually quite a bit of water for the Brazos in this area. I guess the river is still reasonably full from the rains earlier this year. If you are reading from somewhere other than North Texas, you might be startled to hear that many of us have had our wettest year on record. I never thought I could live in Texas and get sick of the pouring rain.
To visit the bridge, we parked our car in a muddy little entrance area just off of the main road. I fretted about parking our Xterra somewhere that might require even a little bit of 4-wheeling to get us out of, but Mark seemed confident, and he turned out to be correct. We all walked out onto the bridge to take a look and some photographs, which Ripley really enjoyed. She is not nearly as afraid of heights as her mother, and she was more than willing to get close to the edge of the bridge. I kept pulling her back towards the middle, and she took the opportunity to turn back and glare at me disdainfully, which is an impressive feat for a canine. The things she puts up with, right?
When we’d had our fill of bridge photographs (and by our fill I mean Mark’s fill), we hopped back in the car and headed on down the road. We stopped again in Albany, Texas, at the Albany Old Jail Art Center. According to the Texas State Historical Association, the old jail building was the first permanent structure in Shackelford County. It was finished in 1878. It’s been a museum since 1980.
Ripley and I played around outside the building while Mark went in for some photos. It’s a neat little building, and it was all decorated for Christmas, which I found endearing. Several sculptures and statues reside in the courtyard area, and we enjoyed those while we waited for Mark. He wasn’t gone long, I promise. It isn’t like he abandons us for museum tours. While we waited, Ripley decided to use her time to startle a delivery man with her adorably random presence in a museum courtyard. Don’t get me wrong, no one’s afraid of Ripley, but when you see a dog that you weren’t expecting it can certainly catch you off guard. She also wanted to stand on the sculptures’ bases, which seemed inappropriate. Maybe I’m just lame. Who knows?
It is a neat little place to visit, regardless, and the pictures Mark took inside were interesting as well. If we had more time, or if the weather had been cooler so Ripley could’ve waited in the car, we’d have both visited inside. That was actually our original plan. The weather ended up being unseasonably warm, however, so I entertained Ripley instead. I’m sure we will visit again someday.
From the museum, we stopped by the Shackelford County courthouse for a quick photo before we continued on our way to Abilene. From Albany, it was only about a 30 minute drive. We stopped in Abilene for lunch at a Schlotzsky’s. It was just down the street from Abilene Christian University, and it was very popular since we were there right about noon. Mark went inside to get our sandwiches while Ripley and I waited with the car. Mark was in and out before the drive-through had moved by two or three cars. I felt a little bad for them, but since I wasn’t waiting there, I wasn’t too concerned.
They didn’t have any little packets of their magical hot sauce, so we had to do without. That was the real tragedy of the day. Luckily they made up for it with my oversized unsweet tea. I can forgive many things for a huge cup of unsweet tea. Don’t tell anyone. It’s like my kryptonite.
After lunch it was time for Mark’s meeting, so we took him to the office building he was visiting and Ripley and I drove back across town without him to the local dog park, Camp Barkeley. The park is named for a former WWII era training camp in Abilene that is now Dyess Air Force Base. It makes for a clever dog park name, I must say. It’s a large park, and while it doesn’t have any trees, it’s pretty nice overall. I was hot in my jeans since the weather was so warm, but I bet all of that sunshine would have been nice if the weather had been behaving properly for December 11th.
Ripley and I hid out at one end of the dog park because she was frightened of a border collie that wanted to herd her around the park, but when the (admittedly very friendly) sheepdog departed, we went back over to make friends with a 7-month-old poodle and another young dog of indeterminate breed. Since they were the only three dogs there, they had a lot of fun together. Ripley can be a little shy, and both of these dogs were about her size and young enough that she got along well with them. Sometimes older or larger dogs frighten her.
We spent about an hour and a half playing in the park before we went back to pick Mark up from his meeting. He was only gone for about 2 hours, which was just enough time for us girls to enjoy ourselves without getting bored and looking for new entertainment. On our way out of Abilene, we stopped to take some photographs of wind turbines. The area is quite windy, and the wind farm there is one of the largest in the country, from what I understand.
The clouds were gorgeous for the photos, even though we were getting closer and closer to dusk. We were hoping to get a little closer than this photo allowed us, but we didn’t really see any other opportunities. It would’ve been neat to get a photograph of some of us standing underneath one of these giants. If you’ve never seen one in person, it is hard to get an idea of just how large they are from a picture. We see them going down the highway in pieces all of the time, which is fascinating as well. The trucks are usually over capacity and have all sorts of warnings on them, as well as multiple escort vehicles.
We stopped again in Albany for a photograph with a giant metal longhorn skull. Inside the eye sockets, the statue has red light bulbs. It wasn’t dark yet, so we missed out on seeing a demon-possessed longhorn skull. It was just run-of-the-mill creepy during the day time. I wonder if they light it up every night?
All three of our stops outside of Abilene were pre-planned, since we’d basically seen all of them on our trip in, we just didn’t have time to stop. After the longhorn skull, we planned to stop at a tree decorated for Christmas with what I had assumed to be beer cans. The tree was outside the gate to a ranch in the Throckmorton area, and when we pulled over, I realized that the cans were actually Sprite Zero. It made the warm and fuzzy feelings a little stronger, I admit. I thought for sure that someone had done the decorating for this with their kids. If it had been beer cans, the warm fuzzies would’ve been much weaker, imagined children or no.
It didn’t take us long to get home from there. We made it back to Denton around 7:30pm, so our day was just shy of 12 hours. That’s a pretty short trip day for us, but we did enjoy ourselves since we haven’t had any others recently.
Our next trip will be to Oklahoma for Christmas, and after that we’re going to Big Bend National Park for the New Year. It won’t be a long trip, but we’re going to hike around the park. We got Ripley some hiking boots and a backpack for Christmas just for the trip. Promise not to tell her, okay? It isn’t Christmas yet and she hasn’t opened her presents. Lucky for me she can’t read. 😉
