BUCKEYES

Beat up Minnesota 42-3, beat up Illinois 34-16, and beat up Wisconsin 34-0. The defense is legitimate, and needs to be I think. Our offense has shown flashes, but I’m not in love with the running game. I think Julian is better than I expected and looks to be getting better, but I’m expecting a couple of dogfights down the road and the offense is going to need to win a game. Thank God for Carnell Tate and Jeremiah, they are just so good.

ROAD TRIPPING

[ 10/5/25 - 10/11/25 ] : Magnolia to Roswell, Cloudcroft, Ruidoso, White Sands, Ransom Canyon, Magnolia

WILDLIFE : Elk, Deer, Cows (in the forest!) Armadillo, Vultures, Hawks, Coyote, and 1 Bulldog named Tanzey Bear.

DAY 1

Drive to Roswell, NM. Hilton, BW3. Almost RAN OUT OF GAS. So much nothing, cotton and sorghum fields, miles and miles of Wind Turbines and Oil Pumps. Visited the International UFO Museum, fun! I BELIEVE.

DAY 2

Roswell to Cloudcroft. Again, so much nothing. If something dies, whether a building, car, or animal, it just… stays there. Drove up through the Lincoln National Forest, and stopped in Cloudcroft (50 degrees or so!), awesome little mountain town, got Pizza and a flight of beer at the Cloudcroft Brewing Company. Walker bought 2 Native American Kachinas, I visited the Laughing Leaf and purchased a little Blue Dream (which I have not sampled yet).

We headed out to Ruidoso to “Dusk and Cedar”, our cabin/house. Fun ride up Foothill Rd, I had to put the 4Runner in 4-wheel drive to get up it (ok, probably didn’t HAVE to). The neighborhoods down the hill were a little sketchy (and recovering from floods apparently), but things got nicer the further up we went. Olive immediately hit the hot tub, Walker and I opened up a beer and played some Avocado Smash. ouch.

DAY 3

Woke up Tuesday Morning and decided to head out to White Sands National Park. We knew the park itself was closed (thanks Trump), but the website said that Dunes Drive was open. It was not, in fact, open. We saw an area on the side of the road where some of the white sand spilled over the barbed-wire fence and where some families were sliding down it with their kids so we decided to stop and check it out. That was cool, but we wanted more, so we climbed through the fence barefoot and up the hill, and BAM, the vast white sands spread out in front of us. SO BEAUTIFUL! We wandered around the dunes for long while, Olive climbing and sliding, and then Walker climbing and sliding, and then me climbing and sliding. We wrote our names in the sand, took pictures, and kind of just… frolicked. It’s such a surreal landscape, formed over millions of years through tectonic drift splitting a mountain range into two mountain ranges, and Gypsum flowing down into an inland sea that has since basically dried up, leaving these pristine bleach white sand dunes and accompanying scrubbery (if that’s not a word, it should be.) Totally worth the potential felony.

Headed back towards Ruidoso, but stopped at the Worlds Largest Pistachio, of course.

DAY 4 & 5

We packed up the next morning and headed East back to Texas, toward Ransom Canyon. We drove through nothing, and through Lubbock (same thing?) and again, seemed underwhelmed as we drove through a non-descript little neighborhood, and then we turned the corner and saw the Frank Bruno Steel House (or more like a ship, or UFO really) overlooking a huge canyon. WOW. Another totally surreal experience walking into this huge steel sculpture, stained glass, winding staircases, and giant windows looking out over a vast hole in the earth. We unpacked during happy hour as the sun began to set directly out back, one of the more gorgeous sunsets I’ve experienced, and the bourbon certainly didn’t hurt things either. The drinks did lead us to inviting people off the street to come tour the place however, which we enjoyed.

We spent the next couple of days just kind of experiencing this weird little world we put ourselves in, a house made of steel, with no straight angles, watching literal multiple-hundreds of vultures soaring over the canyon at our eye-level, sometimes landing on the house itself. I took pictures, read a book (Upgrade, Blake Crouch), Walker read 3 books (4 maybe?), Olive listened to stories, and climbed the walls inside, in a good way. We watched some clips on Frank Bruno, and the making of the house, and learned its history. We ate breakfast burritos from the same place everyday, delivered of course, drank coffee and cocktails, and hung out. It was perfect.

DAY 6

On Saturday, we packed up again, and headed back towards Magnolia, and listened to the Ohio State/Illinois and then the Texas/Oklahoma game on XM Radio. We got home, chatted with Wayne and Paula a bit, and then fell into bed.

MORE PHOTOS:

DRIVE:

RUNYANS:

ROSWELL:

CLOUDCROFT:

DUSK and CEDAR:

WHITE SANDS:

BRUNO STEEL HOUSE: