{"id":2354,"date":"2009-04-23T04:59:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-23T09:59:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-03-27T21:23:03","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T02:23:03","slug":"on-road-to-conestoga-day-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/2009\/04\/23\/on-road-to-conestoga-day-one\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Road to Conestoga (Day One)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This year has been travel-light, so it was very welcome to get on the road this morning. I didn’t even wait for breakfast, just stopping at the Hutto Donut shop to grab something on the way out. And because I allocated an extra day for the travel, I could take my time. I didn’t choose the Interstate, instead I wandered the small two-lane roads winding back and forth, generally north, but taking turns and shifting highways on a whim. I visited the storm-damaged Mother Neff State Park and stopped to see what was there at Meridian State Park. I didn’t really accomplish anything other than chat about my books with the lady ranger at MSP, but that’s okay. I’ll be visiting book stores this trip, but the only time today I actively hunted for them, I chased a lot of dead ends in Temple.<\/p>\n

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I was just enjoying the scenery and feeling the freedom of the road. Once I crossed the Red River into Oklahoma, the wandering was a little different. The Texas Hill Country was far behind and I was dealing with flat terrain. I stopped at a park in Comanche, and took a look at my iPhone’s map. One of my favorite spots was up ahead and to the left, Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. I tried to navigate by bearing to the northwest, but there was really no highway to follow. Instead, once I got close enough to see the mountains in the distance, I was driving the dirt section roads, getting closer by the mile. (A section is one square mile, 640 acres, and around here, the roads made a gridwork of one mile squares, with farmland inside.)<\/div>\n
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Eventually, I crossed highway 62 and entered the parkland. And it does feel more like a park than most NWR’s. The visitor center was large and fancy, but I headed for Mt. Scott, where I took the picture above, and lots of others. I’ve been here a couple of times before, so the only difference was the wind power farm off to the north. It’s a lovely place to look around, especially in a place where most land is flat. <\/div>\n
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I stopped for the day early, finding the lone motel in Apache and began to catch up on my email\/twitter\/RSS reading etc. Once I finish this blog, it’s off to sleep.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year has been travel-light, so it was very welcome to get on the road this morning. I didn’t even wait for breakfast, just stopping at the Hutto Donut shop to grab something on the way out. And because I allocated an extra day for the travel, I could take my time. I didn’t choose… Continue reading On the Road to Conestoga (Day One)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[284,56,285],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/IMG_0619.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-BY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2356,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354\/revisions\/2356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}