This weekend and for a few days after, I am on the road. I left home on Wednesday, headed for Wyoming, but with plans to take time, explore, and take in sights along the way. As I’ve quipped, if I don’t get at least one book out of this trip, I’m not doing it right!

Mostly, I’ve been hitting the trail and doing some hiking. I started out in Caprock Canyon in Texas, which is a gorgeous bit of broken land at the southern end of the Great Plains. I’m headed on Sunday or Monday for the Ogalala National Grassland which is at the northern end of the Great plains. In between, I’ve already spent some time in the Comanche National Grassland, then the Pawnee National Grassland, and as I swing for home I plan to hit the Black Kettle National Grassland. You may be sensing a theme here.

I’m doing diffuse research. I have a series of Western romances I’ve been writing under my penname Lilania Begley, and driving along backroads through Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado has already sparked so many ideas and settings. There are an awful lot of old farmhouses falling to rack and ruin out there. Suddenly coming upon a built-to-last chimney surrounded by rippling grass and nothing else gives a mind to think. I also have the short Juniper Pins in the Cattlemen anthology, which I plan to revise into the novella or short novel it deserves to be, and it is set on the southern Great Plains, so now I’ve got an idea of the feel, the land, the plants, the scent of junipers. Also, though, I’m soaking up details in memory and photos to bring back later when I’m working on a book – whether it’s set on this planet, or another. Verisimilitude works in science fiction, too.

Regardless, it is highly unlikely I’ll ever come back this way again. I’m treating most of these as if they were once in a lifetime opportunities, and holding them close while I’m on the trail, looking and sniffing and paying no attention to the world beyond my grasp at that moment. I’m traveling solo, which means I can spend as much time as I like. It’s a bit lonely, but it also means my brain has no one to talk to but itself, and most of the hours in the car I’ve not even turned on music, hoping that I’ll start spinning story because there’s nothing else to do!

I chose to travel off the beaten path, and it’s been beautiful. Gloriously sunny and bright, the soft blues and greens of grasslands punctuated by cows, horses, and scattered farms. Driving through small towns out in the middle of nowhere, dusty and looking like something out of time. When I head for home, I plan to follow the same pattern, just down through Nebraska and Kansas into Oklahoma and finally back into Texas. I’m hoping to catch a few small-town museums along the way – I missed out on some interesting ones in Colorado as I started my day early and they weren’t open yet when I drove past them!

I should be back home again sometime Tuesday. Then I take off on another trip (but shorter, and flying) Friday. I’ll set up my post reporting on the last half of this trip with photos, for next week. The hotel wifi is dodgy and uploading photos is not working well. I did capture videos, which I’m slowly putting up, if you’d like to join me on the trail for a moment…