Sunday, April 6, 2008

The Road Trip Home

In the famous tune from the famous musical, they say that Oklahoma is "Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain." To describe the wind as we left Tulsa as "sweepin'" is like describing a blast furnace as a hair dryer. This is wind you can lean on. What's more we noticed something odd in the forests along the freeway: there were no tall trees. Take a closer look and there is an obvious reason for it. The higher branches of these trees are broken. Huge branches ripped off and left dangling. The trees simply cannot grow against the high praire wind.

You have to admire the hardiness of the souls who live here. Not only do they endure the absence of decent coffee and fresh orange juice, but they also somehow accomodate the wind without (at least outwardly) being incredibly cranky.

One display that manages to stand against the wind, but not the graffetti artists, is the buried cadillac "sculpture" outside of Amarillo (the wind in the panhandle is just as stiff as the wind in Oklahoma). The owner of Cadillac Ranch buried these cadillacs when they were new and pristine but has long ago accepted the project as living art.

Thank goodness there was a Starbucks in Albuquerque, but we didn't have a Peets until we returned to the Bay Area. Poor Whitney was very grateful to end the prolonged nap in her crate.

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