After church this morning, William and I quickly changed into work clothes, then ran through the drive-thru at Whataburger for a #1 combo. Colin had a prescribed burn scheduled for Saturday, but the wind was pretty ferocious and he wanted to get it done, so he rescheduled it for Sunday, when winds were much calmer. William and I were very excited to get the opportunity to help out a little and also, just to see the burn process ---It was lots of fun, from our perspective. We enjoyed watching, and hearing on the two-ways, Colin and Ronnie work.
The burn was for 126 acres located kind of in the middle of nowhere. Actually it was between Menard and Christoval, closer to Fort McKavett than any other city. The burn went well and by about 6:30, we were in the car and heading back to the house.
We headed back toward Menard, planning to go through Eden and then home through Vick and Eola. Only I saw this highway that turned off to the North, just a few miles after we left the burn sight. We got out the map, didn't see the highway on there, but hey.....it looked like a fine, wide ranch road. HA!! It was a ranch road all right......if only we'd known!
Almost immediately, we were impressed by the many, many deer that were frolicking back and forth across the road. Not in a hurry, really, they seemed to have a real sense of ownership of that road. We were throwing on the brakes every few yards in order to miss deer. THEN....the pavement ended!! And at first, the caliche road was nice and wide. Yes, we did consider turning around and backtracking and going back to Plan A, but we would have to negotiate all those crazy deer again and decided to just keep on going. "It can't be a very long road, can it?" "We'll just pop out on a highway in a little while." Uhhhhh......No!
We did not "pop out on a highway" for another 40-50!!! miles!!! And obviously, yes it was a "very long road" .... very long!! AND in addition to the deer that were still threatening, now we were plagued by raccoons running across the road....big raccoons!! It really was funny and I got the giggles a few times. William was tired and hungry by this time and not nearly as amused as I was.
Anyway, the road just kept getting narrower and narrower and bumpy-er and lumpy-er and soon ALL signs of civilization disappeared. It was getting darker now and there was not even a guardlight out in the pastures. All I could figure, is that apparently, electricity has not made its way out into these areas yet...... It was soooo dark! We drove for miles and miles with just fences on both sides, no ranch gates even....just miles and miles of fence. AND the wildlife!
Finally, finally.....we did "pop out onto a highway" We came out onto a divided four-lane highway. But we could not determine where in the world we were. Nothing looked familiar. There was obviously a city off to one side that we hoped was San Angelo, but nothing indicated that for sure. So, we just kept on driving until we found something that looked right and finally made our way to our house. Whew! What a trip!
We figured up that our shortcut saved us......are you ready for this??? Four miles!!! Four! Instead of the 70 miles we would have driven going all the way into Menard and home, we took the crazy ranch road "shortcut" and drove 66 miles. AND it took about 20 minutes longer as well!
Oh well! We did something today we had never done before -- helped Colin and Ronnie with a burn. And we went somewhere we had never been before -- wish I knew for sure where that was.....hmmmmm.... It was all fun! It was all good! It was all an adventure!
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