Been out taking down animal towns all over the state, covering miles and seeing places I hadn't been before. In no particular order, these are some of the oddball animal places bagged in the past week. Angus, Snook, Hare, Marlin, Elk, Palo Pinto, Possum Kingdom, Antelope, Mustang, Buffalo, Roans Prarie, Canary, Personville, Elkhart, Salmon, Ratcliff, Crabbs Prairie.... then there are those places that have a name but don't exist once you get there. Lots of random images and memories from rides like this, photos that only exist in the mind: Spent the night in Mineral Wells on the sweep up north and learned about the Baker Hotel and it's many haunts. The place looks like it should be haunted, full of memories and it is. google it and read about the history, it's facinating. El Pulido has pretty decent Mex food there and seriously cold frozen mugs for the cerveza. Add that to the road food stop list in MW. Turning off from Huntsville towards Roans Prarie, ended up on part of the route of a triathalon bicycle race. In the midst of that, 3 other m/c's come zipping by me at a high rate of speed, followed promptly by my Valentine sounding off, indicating a steady and growing radar presence coming up from the rear. Soon enough the Montgomery LEO passes me in pursuit of the other bikes who had turned off the road. leaving me to wonder if I was going to have to explain that it wasn't me hauling ass from him. I think the hi-viz Darien jacket was enough to convince him he hadn't seen me as a culprit. Still received the hard once over look. Not me, occifer, not today anyway. Stopped in Ratcliff in the Crockett Nat'l Forest to document the post office for a kill, and while putting things away, an old Dodge van pulls in and circles the dusty lot next door to the little PO. Old black gentleman with snow white hair, sideburns and beard is just grinning like a Cheshire Cat out the drivers side window, happy on a sunny cool Sunday afternoon. I can see he's got his mauve and gold choir robe on, with part of it stuck, hanging out the closed door of the van, but he's happy and oblivious to it, just grinning and waves at me, I wave back. He parks, another pickup truck pulls up with some other friends of his. Our happy pal jumps out of the truck still grinning, his mauve and gold choir robe now flowing around him, and revealing this bright electric blue suit he's wearing underneath the choir robes. Stylin'!! Now I know why he was grinngin at me, he liked the hi-viz yellow jacket I had on, the man knows fashion. He hops in the pickup with his pals and is gone, leaving me and Post Office alone to plan the next stop. Documenting Antelope, I'm stopped in front of the old stone Community Center, falling in and abandoned. The old post office had been torn down years ago, another small village on the way to nowhere. Car pulls up, out hops old gent in his 80s and wife, looking around a bit. Old gent starts up the conversation as is typical in those parts. Seems he lived there as a kid, the town was created when the hiway was being built from Ft. Worth. His dad worked on the hiway and their familly, and others who worked building the original road, lived in tents there year round before there were structures. He wanted his wife to see where he had grown up and what had been built, and what had come and gone. North of Canary, I believe, is the open pit lignite mine and companion electric generation station. There is something fascinating about large industrial installations, and this was no exception. The plant is visible from I-45, seveeral miles to the east, but the FM road I'm on heading towards Personville runs right in front of it and you can get the full perspective of just how big these things are, almost incongruous in the middle of farm country, but how many thousands of refridgerators, tv and light bulbs in central texas are being lit by that station. It's like the Monfort meat packing plant outside of Dumas, this giant industrial complex with nothing else around. I always want to stop and take a tour if it's at all possible, but the ride takes precedence and must keep moving on to the next image to be stored, memory created. There's more for later....
