October 7, 2025
I absolutely love lonely highways, especially out here in the West. So, imagine my big-fat-smile when I received a photo yesterday from mi amigo Buckeye Blake who is driving home to Texas after our show at the Scottsdale Museum of the West last Friday.
In the middle of nowhere you will find yourself He sent me this photo outside of Vaughn, New Mexico with the tagline: "I am the one and only SOB out here on the Llano!" Truer words have never been spoken.
Of course, Buckeye is referring to the Llano Estacado which is often translated into English as the Staked Plains, but a more accurate translation would be the Stockaded Plains, which derives from the steep escarpments on the eastern, northern and western edges of the plains. Early explorers remarked that the ridges abutting the plains resembled "ramparts, or stockades" rather than "staked." Here's how an early tourist described it:
"I reached some plains so vast that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I traveled over them for more than 300 leagues. . .with no more land marks than if we had been swallowed by the sea. . .there was not a stone, nor bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by."
—Conquistador Francisco Coronado, 1541
You ever drive thru Southeastern Oregon, Bob? Makes Texas east of Van Horn look a lot more interesting.
ReplyDeleteAnd AZ's Kofa range a visual wonderland.