Thinking about Flatness

In Weatherford, Oklahoma, we ran across about 100 or so giant windmills (well, technically, they are called wind turbines because they use wind power to generate electricity instead of using it to operate machinery of some kind). Weatherford is home to one of the largest wind energy farms in the region. I’d seen a television show in the past about the use of wind turbines, although I was surprised to see them featured so prominently in a small community. These turbines are virtually absent (as far as I know) in the Southeastern United States because we lack enough sustained wind power. I guess it shows how little I’ve actually traveled to be affected so much by some silly windmills (excuse me, wind turbines). The ones in Weatherford are 262 feet tall, with three blades of 122 feet each. Check out the photos in the Flatness album.

Whoever coined the phrase “I could see it coming a mile away” must have grown up on the plains. The other day I commented about how flat Arkansas was near the Mississippi River, but that was nothing compared to I-40 before and after Amarillo, Texas. I’ve only experienced real flatness at the beach, where you can look upon the ocean’s horizon and imagine Europe on the other side. But with the views of the Texas panhandle on I-40, I felt much different, sort of surrounded by emptiness, which is an odd sensation I don’t really know how to describe. I suppose it was sort of like listening to the sound of silence, put in another sense (if that even makes sense). Nothing restricted my gaze in any direction, and instead of feeling lost, I felt comforted. It was so flat that if you had a mohawk, beehive, or afro on your head I would have seen you from five miles away. Literally.

This flatness really helped me in Groom, Texas. I saw something odd in the distance that looked like another wind turbine. In the meantime, I passed a billboard that touted “The Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere.” Interesting, I thought. I hoped I wouldn’t have to get off the interstate to see it, as it was threatening rain. Silly me, I should had just trusted the billboard. The suspected wind turbine, which I saw from almost eight miles away (I measured), turned out to be this giant cross. I should have trusted the billboard-makers. After all, if they were boasting about the size of their cross, they certainly wouldn’t lie about it (although it turns out their billboard is a bit outdated, as another church in Illinois saw the cross in Groom and decided to build their own eight feet higher). The cross is 190 feet tall. That’s a lot of cross.

The weather held up today for 400 miles. We started under overcast skies for the first 50 miles, transitioned to clear blue for 200 miles, and then came back to threatening skies once again for the final 150 miles to Tucumcari (pronounced Too-kum-kair-ee). The landscape gradually changed from green and rolling (but expansive) to flat and drab. New Mexico finally emerged as if out of nowhere, though, as the landscape shifted rather quickly to become full of brittlebrush and mesas.

Our hotel is on the old Route 66. More to come tomorrow on Tucumcari. We’ll have the day to rest and explore a little bit. I hear there is some kind of dinosaur museum down the road.

403.5 miles today. 1,520.7 total miles.