"Let's go find the Shafter Lake cemetery," Deborah urged me as she read the historical marker at the southeast corner of the lake.
I shook my head, "I tried to, about four years ago. I got lost on the oil field roads. The roads are rough, full of erosion gullies, places with high-centers."
She would not take no for an answer. She and I and son Nick had stopped along the shores of the salt playa earlier. I had taken some photographs for a future photoessay for the "Alkali Habitat" section of the Sibley Nature Center Web site. "It says the road is county maintained."
"But the marker was erected 30 years ago," but that was the end of my weak arguments against the adventure. Off we went, and after we checked out the old medallion home (and only remaining structure of the town) and a second historical marker, the first mile of county road was indeed maintained. "This will be easy," She chortled.
"The map shows the cemetery at the southwest corner of the lake, and this is only half-way down the west side," I told her when the maintained road ended. She pointed down a rough rocky road - "Let's go there!"
"I went this way, and it got very rough and I had to turn around in the little truck."
She shook her head. "We have 4-wheel drive - so drive on."
I shrugged. "Yes'm."
The road did get rough, but we made it up the hill. At the top of the hill a smaller road turned off. "Maybe this is it," she said, so I turned. We bounced down it, almost to the lake. "I would think the cemetery would be on the hill, not down near the playa." Deborah told me to turn around. "Yes'm," I said. We checked a second road leading to the lake, but again, no success. We kept looking at the top of ridges, expecting to see some feature, like a gate, that would indicate a cemetery. We came to a third road.
"The historical marker said it was south of the lake - maybe this map is wrong. Don't turn down this road." We went through a cattle guard and went another mile south to a road leading east. After another mile, we found a road leading toward the lake, but it deadended at an oil well far from the lake. A little road led back west and then up a hill - and we could see what looked like a gate. But it was not a gate, just more oil field signage.
To the west and northwest we could see rain pouring out of towering thunderheads. "The good road ended on the other side of the main draw on the west side of the lake. We might head back - I would hate to deal with a flash flood." Earlier in the day, between Lovington, N.M., and Plains we had been forced to pull off the road due to a torrential downpour. I also fretted about our trespassing - "We have not been on the county road, but on private property, and that is a big no-no in West Texas."
We had left Midland early and driven to Lovington in hopes of seeing "the world's greatest lizard race." When we arrived at Lovington we bought a local paper and found that the race would not happen until mid-afternoon. We had noticed the gasoline was 30 cents cheaper in Hobbs, N.M. Deborah had oohed and aahed over the garden ornaments for sale at the O&E Trailer Sales lot north of Hobbs.
Back to Hobbs we went - and the variety of garden ornamentation was by far the best we had ever seen - hundreds of different concrete statues. We, as is our wont, went up and down neighborhood streets, admiring older homes and gardens and photographed unique playground equipment and an old red farmhouse with a silo. After lunch and filling up the gas tank, we zig-zagged on county roads in the "exurbia" north of Hobbs. A steady rain shower cooled the air from 90 to 67, so we worried about the race being cancelled.
We returned to Lovington (where the sun was shining) again drove the neighborhood streets. About an hour before the race, Deborah got sleepy. I told her I would drive towards Plains and back, so she could sleep. She woke up (briefly) when I stopped for the downpour and to turn around. The lizard races were lots of fun - first a special horny toad race entertained us, and then three heats of lizards were ran. The big collared lizards were the fastest.
One teenager was confused about what was a lizard - he had a Tiger Salamander, an amphibian, and called it a Gila Monster, but was allowed to enter the race. Other racers had southern prairie lizards and a species of whiptail (or racerunner). The emcee, wearing a big green lizard hat, squirted the crowd with a big water gun, played old rock and roll music, and made the audience do the wave. A little girl from Hobbs won the final run-off race between the first and second place winners of the three heats, but a 30-something aged man from South Africa with a local lizard placed in the running. As we keft I had to have a mango-chile ice bar from the paleteria cart. Deborah got a horchata ice bar.
We headed home via Denver City, and after wriggling around the streets of southwest Andrews to find the Community Chapel in the Andrews Cemetery (a beautiful domed building) we headed to Shafter Lake. We never went off the Llano Estacado all day.
As we started to head home, I decided to go down the road we had not turned down. It went up a hill and then stopped in a caliche pit. We finally gave up, but we agreed that it had been a blast, navigating the rough roads, trying to locate a cemetery in that bizarre habitat of salt loess and rough caliche gravel.
The next day she went online and found that the cemetery was only a hundred yards from where we had given up. She got its coordinates for our GPS device and told me, "We will find it, and soon." "Yes'm!"
We went back three days later, and found the cemetery. The "maintained" county road is not, and a person has to walk 300-plus yards to get to the site.
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