We forgot shortly into the drive just how far Midland was from El Paso. We stopped at Cattleman’s Ranch for dinner about 30 minutes outside of town. We’d heard that there was no better place to see a sunset in West Texas. We don’t know if that’s true, but what we saw (and ate) was pretty incredible. Before it opened we took a detour past the ranch into a giant range area. It had a gate and a large sign reading “Open Range, Livestock in Road.” No livestock sadly; smashed livestock poop though.
We made it to Cattleman’s and looked out over the lake. It was there that the magnitude of this adventure really sunk in. “All this for poetry?” I thought. Doing spoken word for colleges was a dream of mine, but I never thought I’d achieve it. Now, we were regularly booked for Black History Month Poetry Slams, and National Poetry Month Readings all across the country. The ranch also had a small zoo, an “indian maze”, and a “lake walk.” We walked off a small..small.. portion of our meal touring the property. Just before the sun was completely out of site, we made our way out of the ranch.
It was darker than the last time we’d seen the badlands. It also started raining about halfway to Midland. We scanned the radios for anything, but often times we were so far out in the nothingness there were few stations.
We were getting very sleepy as we pulled into Midland, TX for our halfway stop before Amarillo. Ahead we saw the hotel in the foggy distance. Unfortunately there was a lot of construction going on at the time, which caused us to miss the exit, then it caused us to miss the turn when we got turned around. Once we got our bearings we were unable to find the driveway. Keep in mind that when we were missing the turns, it was never as simple as U-Turning. It usually involved looping around the highway and adding another five minutes.
We rounded the corner and saw our hotel but could not find the driveway. It took about a split second of eye contact before we agreed to the subconscious decision of ramming the rental car over the curb and through the grass, and over another curb into the parking lot. It felt WAY too good.
We checked in and chatted up the night auditor. She was originally from around Burnet, the Blue Bonnet Capital Of Texas. I asked her what brought her to Midland. She said she was following the money. Midland (particularly this part of Midland) underwent quite the oil boom for many years. There is very little permanent housing in this part of the city. She said many of the guests at this hotel are here through the week,and then go to their ‘real’ homes on the weekends. She says she knows many of her guests well and considers them family. It made me wonder if the Hyatt in Midland was more of a home to many of the workers than their actual home.
We rolled our luggage to our room and crashed out. We were very tired, and had the next day off, so we were definitely going to sleep in.