What I Learned on The Road Trip

Oh, honeys, I learned a lot. You’d think, I’m sure, that At My Age, there wouldn’t be a lot for me to learn. Not that I know everything, no. But you know:  you get over that hump of middle age, and you’re not exposed so much to new ways of doing things and thinking about things. You get in a comfortable place, and it feels pretty good to stay there. Right?
Nope. Not always. Here are some things I learned/am learning.
1. It IS possible for me to Travel Lite. Or at least More Litely (like Holly Golightly—that’s a reference to something I don’t even know about:  is it a book? A movie? A song? No fair googling it—you get to tell us ONLY if you already know (which I don’t, sadly)). I took WAY less crap than I usually do, as an experiment, and here’s the thing that’s probably not going to surprise anybody but me:  I could have taken even LESS. I didn’t take a bag of journal stuff. I didn’t take a stack of un-read magazines. I didn’t take my entire DESK, thank you very much. And I didn’t take a bazillion changes of clothes. Here’re two things you won’t believe:
     --I took fewer clothes than The EGE

  --I wore the SAME thing the entire time we were gone. Except for underwear! Geez! I wore two orange skirts, one over the other. I wore two sleeveless blouses—each one for two days. On the last day, I wore a tank top.  This was an experiment. Since I usually wear these skirts over each other except in the hottest part of summer, I figured that, if I spilled something on myself, I could just switch, and wear the top one on the bottom. I did, of course, spill something on myself—in the first 15 minutes, right after stopping at Starbucks-- but it wasn’t noticeable, and I said, “Eh, screw it.” (I said a lot of other stuff when I spilled latte all over me and the sewing and the console, but never mind.) So the only things I needed changes of:  underwear, and socks—which I wear in the hotel/motel room, as I do NOT like to walk on their skanky carpets. I wore one pair of shoes. Although I will always take an extra pair of shoes and some extra clothing, I can see that I was MUCH happier with fewer choices. Clothing, art supplies—are you beginning to see something going on here?
I think I can reduce the load even more this weekend. It’s going to become a challenge to see how little stuff I can take and still have everything I need. Which is, pretty much:
--something to read (I try to have a novel just started, plus one other thing—either non-fiction or a magazine—I like the latter in the morning, with coffee; but I need A Story at bedtime. Yeah, I know.)
--something to stitch. I did a TON of this and will show you later—I love few things more than stitching while The EGE drives. We talk, we sing to the radio, I entertain him—all while happily stitching miles and miles.
--the make-up kit with the razor and shampoo and soap and stuff
--my pillow—for my back and neck
--camera, cell phone, journal, maps.

2. It is possible to travel and never shop. The last trip we took, to Dallas, we shopped for stuff. We ran around looking for a rug and wool felt and lighting and just Stuff. I hated it. I mean, we had fun. We always have fun. But, while I like looking at stuff, the whole consumer culture thing, with people packing the malls and big box stores and buying tons and tons of worthless crap that they don’t need and can’t afford—it depresses me in ways I can’t even explain. Seeing people—esp. women—who buy more and more and more and go shopping like it’s A Hunt and think that their purchases are somehow going to make them happy—well. It’s just really depressing. Being around people who are shopping even bothers me. This trip? I bought two things: three skeins of embroidery floss, since I ran out of #166. I had two full skeins when we left, but even though I split those in half, using just 3 strands for this project, I still ran out.

The other thing: mesquite candy and jelly at a museum, just because we’d never tried it. And also because I felt sorry for the guy trying to run this little shop way out in the middle of nowhere.
3. There are huge swaths of Texas that are more like Mexico than they are the rest of Texas. The climate, the culture, the signs, the people. Once we left San Antonio and headed south, we saw a couple dozen white people and TWO black people—a man working on the highway and a woman who cut The EGE off in traffic and made him rant. If you can travel for 4 days and see TONS of people and count the number of black people you see, what does that say? Everyone else was either Hispanic or Mexican. (This is how I think of the difference: Hispanic –primary attachment is to US; Mexican –  primary attachment is to Mexico.) The billboards were more often in Spanish than English. All the public signs were doubled:  one in English, one in Spanish. We went into downtown Brownsville on Sunday afternoon. It looked cool—old and funky, and there were lots of people walking on the streets, so we parked and got out to see what was there. It was quite amazing:  more like Juarez than a US city. Lots of little shops with the doors open and Spanish music playing on tinny speakers, funky little displays in the windows of the same cheap plastic consumer stuff you see in poor downtown areas everywhere. The difference between Brownsville and Juarez was that there were no farmacias or carnicerias or liquor stores, all of which line the streets in Juarez—probably for the tourists and people who come across from the US to buy cheap penicillin.
People looked at us like we were from Mars. Sure, we get looks no matter where we are, but this was way beyond normal. We felt like we did the few times we crossed the border, like we were so odd and foreign that we should excuse ourselves for being there.
And it was the same when we went to the beach. We went to two beaches—Boca Chica and South Padre Island. Now, I don’t know about y’all, but my idea of a Day at the Beach is walking for miles on the edge of the surf, getting your feet wet and looking for cool shells. We’ve done this on Galveston and on Padre Island, in Ventura and Santa Monica. Here, though? This was nothing like I’ve seen before:  we paid $3 on South Padre and drove around a dune, thinking there’d be a parking lot. Instead, there was the water, with a thin strip of sand. And as far as the eye could see, in either direction, was “the parking lot”—miles of vehicles, mostly all pick-ups and SUV’s, parked at the edge of the water, packed as closely as if it really were a parking lot.

We didn’t even get out—I was so astounded with the sheer mass of humanity that we turned around and left. The next day we tried Boca Chica—same thing, only without the porta potties or $3 cover charge. We parked and got out and walked, and again it was as if we were strangers in a strange land. We saw three white people in those entire two days:  one was a guy walking along the beach drinking what was surely his 4,756th beer of the day. The other two were an old er couple, doing the exact same thing we were doing:  carrying their shoes and picking up a few shells, walking in the surf and smiling.
Everyone else? Apparently what you do is get there early and park your truck and set up camp:  kitchen chairs, metal folding chairs, tables, tents, cots, grills, ice chests. All within three feet of the family next to you. Then the adults sit, glumly, by the truck while the children play in the water. The children all looked happy, but the adults—actually, mostly the women--seemed lifeless and depressed, like this was just another job to be finished. The dogs, tied to stakes or the axles of the trucks, were similarly depressed.
And almost without exception, everyone was fat. Not just the adults, but the kids. Some were merely plump, but many were obese, and food was everywhere:  fruits and chips and cans of cola and beer and meat grilling, just whole families sitting morosely in the sand and eating, eating, eating. And looking at us like we were completely nuts as we walked up and down the beach and talked and laughed. The people were friendly, when we talked to them and asked what they were catching as they fished—The EGE was astounded that men were fishing right beside kids playing in the water, using these amazing big hooks that looked like copper spiders—but we had to smile and speak first. Otherwise they just stared at us as if we’d somehow taken a wrong turn and ended up at a private party where we were not particularly welcome. It was surreal. And it really made me think about culture and class, about identity and geography and the ways people live and what they expect from their lives. And how many, many people there are on the planet. I mean, when you go to the beach to have fun on your day off and spend it packed in so tightly with other people that it’s like you’re all joined together, that’s a LOT of people.
I’d always thought, until just this last month or so, that the ways people put restrictions on things were racist, snobbish, classist. And just wrong. But now I understand why some of the beaches have “limited access” and all the rules:  no vehicles, no ice chests, no cooking. I understand why there are hefty fees to get into some things. I was right:  it is to keep people out. Sure, you can argue that the rules are, indeed, classist. They are. But they also make sense in a world where there are so many people and so many ways of doing things. If all the beaches allow people to day camp, there will be no beaches where other people can walk without wending their way through fishing lines and dog chains and hibachis. We went to eat at a hotel restaurant on the beach, and there was a fence and gates and guards, one of them driving a little golf cart to take you from the parking lot to the restaurant. They escorted you to the door and escorted you in. Another guard stood at the gate leading to the beach, opening the gate for returning hotel guests and keeping in touch with the other guards via walkie talkie. There were lists of things not allowed at the pool, which now all suddenly made sense:  no ice chests, no glass containers, no food, no drink, no babies in diapers (!). You had to have a bathing suit (the people on the beach were mostly all swimming in shorts and jeans and t-shirts). It was a way to keep this huge, throbbing mass of humanity from surging, amoeba-like, across the entire island.
Amazing. Scary. Depressing.
Well, before I get any more bummed out about the overpopulation of the world, the good stuff:  we had an excellent time. We had two fabulous seafood dinners at two different restaurants on the island, with a lot of wine. And chocolate—all the things (fish, chocolate, lots of food) that I usually avoid. We didn’t get to walk much, because with all the people, there wasn’t really anywhere TO walk, so I’m trying to make up for it now that we’re home.
The best parts:  the meals. The driving itself. And two things from yesterday:
1. We stopped in Langtry, up the Rio Grande from Del Rio, to visit the Judge Roy Bean Saloon and Museum. (two separate links there).

For some silly reason, I was imagining an actual working saloon, with an old wooden bar and maybe tables on the porch, where I could have a glass of wine. Instead, it was a tidy little museum, very modern and clean and well-lighted and excellently-staffed, up in the middle of nowhere. The docent had TONS of literature about everywhere in Texas and knew TONS of everything. For instance:  we go through Iraan (ira-ann) many times every year—usually when we go to Houston or San Antonio—and I’ve often noticed a dinosaur statue and a cave man but had never paid any particular attention to it. Turns out the guy who created the comic strip Alley Oop was born in Iraan. I had no idea. This woman was so cool—she’s traveled all over, to as many little museums and exhibits and local little landmarks as she can find. There was am amazing cactus garden, landscaped, with markers telling about the plants and their uses by the curanderos.

It was quite lovely, and now I know that the plant that looks (sort of) and smells (quite a bit) like wisteria is purple mountain laurel. I need to check it out and see if they’re related.
Langtry was named, supposedly, by Judge Bean after Lillie Langtry, the actress on whom he had a huge crush. He named the town after her and then named his house The Opera House in hopes of enticing her to visit. He apparently wrote her TONS of letters. She did finally visit, but not until after he died, at his own saloon.
The other thing we did yesterday:  on the road between Dryden and Sheffield, we drove over a creek. I said, “Wow. It’s been such a long time since I walked in a creek,” (I lived for 4 years on a creek in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and loved it). The EGE asked, “You want to go back?” So we did, and we walked down the embankment and walked along the creek, which was clear and cold. We could see schools of minnows and a water snake, and we skipped rocks across to the other side. I didn’t know I knew how to skip rocks, but apparently so.

It was fabulous.
And then we came home.
I’ve learned that I can pack less, wear the same clothes over and over. I don’t want to go to places where there’s nothing to do but shop, and I don’t want to be squished in masses of humanity. We like not to have too much planning, and we have the most fun when we do spontaneous stuff, whether it’s walking beside a creek or checking out some tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. We need to find places where we can walk more and talk to more people who don’t eye us quite so suspiciously. All good things to know as I begin thinking about The Next Adventure.
[Oh, for anyone who wants to follow along at home, here’s the map. We drove from Midland south on 349 through Rankin and Iraan and took I-10 east to San Antonio. From there, we went south to Brownsville and South Padre Island. From there, we drove all the southernmost roads to Del Rio, where we spent the night, and then up to Langtry and Dryden, where we again picked up 349 and drove north, back through Rankin and home. 1485 miles. Anyone know where to find an online map I can draw on?]

Oh:  a couple more photos:
On Friday afternoon, we sat on the balcony of the Westin in San Antonio and had a drink, watching the people on the river. It was something I’d wanted to do since we stayed there one Christmas and I saw the balcony and thought how perfect it would be to sit and have a glass of wine. Alas, at that time it was WAY too cold. Not this time, even though that’s not where we were staying:

And then we walked along the Riverwalk. Sure, it’s touristy. But it’s still fun: