Dispatch 03: Colorado City to Quitaque
With only four hours of sleep last night, I woke disheveled, packed my gear, and went to fire up the motorcycle. My key was missing. It was packed inside my tent, which was two bags deep on top of my pillion seat. After a quick unpack and repack, Jerod and I departed Lake Colorado City State Park.
We rode past the park entrance along asphalt. As the road curved we went straight and picked up a nicely groomed and graded caliche road. My spirits rose. I grew up in nearby Snyder. This is the flora and topography of my youth. Scrubby mesquites mingled amongst, water filled cattle tanks, buttes and small mesas. We stopped in Coahoma for breakfast burritos at the Stripe’s convenience store.
We leave Coahoma and ride Interstate 20’s service road to avoid the horde of Permian Basin big rigs and oil patch traffic. We passed the rusted and gnarled tubes of Big Spring’s refinery, veer northwest and attacked today’s gravel roads.
A dip. A crest. And then sand. More dips, more hills, and more sand. It takes a certain finesse to navigate a nearly 600-pound moto and gear through rutted sand. Jerod went down in a graceful, slow-motion tumble. It took both of us to lift his beast of a machine.
We stopped at the Lamesa Rodeo grounds where in the 80s I used to compete in motorcycle rodeos: barrel racing, pole bending, long jump, and a wheelie contest, which I won.
Next we made a detour through Lubbock, through the Texas Tech campus, and around Memorial Circle and deeper up the Plains.
Outside Floydada, we dipped in and out of Blanco Canyon, passed playa lakes, and through the sentinels of the plains, the wind turbines.
Our bikes descended the Caprock Escarpment along the guardrail curves of FM 689 and hit Quitaque at dark. Our campsite was at the back of Caprock Canyons State Park. The air cooled as we descended into the canyon. Massive shadows appeared on our right! A few of the park’s bison were lumbering in the ditch. We pitched tents at Little Red campground. It was another late night, and it will be another early morning. I’m not sure I can keep up this pace.
