Mile 5280. Quitaque TX, to Clayton Lake, NM

Mile 5280. Quitaque TX, to Clayton Lake, NM. June 20. 2012

We woke up early in Quitaque and were greeted by 5 mule deer, impervious to our presence.  They let us approach within 50 feet.  I am not one of those people who become inured to the nature around them, even if it is commonplace.  There is a magic thing that happens when different species regard one another and decide to live and let live. On the way out of the camp, we saw another bison.  Another amazing creature.

We stopped in Amarillo, TX for coffee and an Internet check.  On the way out of Amarillo we saw a few amazing things.  First, it is so flat there that you can see 40 miles.  Okay, so that is a turnaround vista of 5204 square miles, for you number buffs. Secondly, they have some serious wind turbines out there and plenty of wind to turn them.  The turbines went on as far as you could see.  Finally, just northwest of Amarillo, there was a cattle stockyard with (tens of?) thousands of cattle, shoulder-to-shoulder, rump to rump, stewing in their own feces. There was no grass or prarie in the stockyard but silos were nearby to provide grain for fattening.  The stench could knock you dead.  It may have been enough to make me a permanent vegetarian.  Nah.

In the northeast part of New Mexico, we noticed some subtle changes.  The roads weren’t quite as good. It was still hard (impossible) to find a place that served beer.  The towns had wide streets and few businesses.  And the landscape changed.  The farms were much bigger and the houses fewer and farther in between.  Another strange thing.  It was HOT in Texas, but in New Mexico even at 90, you feel a little chill.  It must be the thinner, drier air. It was flat with occasional low hills.    

Clayton Lake is located 12 miles outside of Clayton, a fairly modern little town with several restaurants, a Best Western Inn, a Super 8, and some smaller motels, like the Mission Motel and the Santa Fe Trail motel, shabby little places that did not look inviting.  The Eklund Hotel looked straight out of the turn of the last century and boasted that Black Jack Ketcham, robber and murder, was hung there in 1901 at the tender age of 37.  Many of the people looked Mexican or Indian, but spoke perfect English. The 15-mile road to Clayton Lake is spectacular.  You wind down this lane into a vast bowl, with high ridges and two mountains on the edges.  You become aware that this place, millions of years ago, was a bay or a huge lake. Now it is prarie.  A prarie is a specialized habitat adapted to a low water conditions.  Too little water for trees (except for a few junipers) and to much water for desert.  The grass can make it through periods of drought. 

 

The rounded mountains were probably islands at one time or another.  Clayton Lake is a 350 acre impoundment lake, made by damming up the Canadian river.  When they built the dam they had to do some digging and after the wind and rain got finished with what was left of the newly exposed soil, it became apparent that millions of years ago dinosaurs roamed the area.  

 There are a lot of really neat dinosaur tracks, some meat eaters, some plant eaters, and some up to 40 feet long.  Their tracts are clearly visible in an area by the lake.  Dinosaur tracks can tell you more about the dinosaurs’ life than the skeletons do sometimes.  You can figure out their velocity, how they moved, and sometimes even how they thought, hesitating, looking around, changing direction.  Really neat stuff.  There is a Rock Garden near our campsite made of strange rock formations I have never seen before.  It was nice to sit there and think.  I used to do that a lot when I was a college student—sit and think—and now that eternity is closing in, I do it even more.  But I should heed my own advice:  “If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much.” 

In town, signs in the restaurants advised us to pray for rain.  We did and it did.  We got a little shower at night but managed to stay dry.