Masterson to Masterson: Driving Our Ford Maverick 2,800 Miles for the Bit

The pitch was simple. We’d owned our long-term, Best Of award-winning Ford Maverick for almost a year but had only just cracked the 12,000-mile mark with it in early December. Compared with recent Best of the Year predecessors such as our Ford F-150 and Genesis G70, that figure was on the low side. We’d done mileage reportage for the Maverick already, but with no obligations for Christmas or New Year’s, I suggested putting some serious numbers on the odometer in service of a story with the most inane of premises: visiting Masterson, Texas.

It was, improbably, approved.

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The Route

We can thank my father for this idea. A few years ago over the usual Sunday call to my parents, Dad offhandedly asked if I’d ever heard of Masterson. I hadn’t, and with good reason: Founded in 1927 and originally known as Bivins, it stands now as an unincorporated community roughly 30 miles north of downtown Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. The population, none of whom I’m related to, has hovered at 10-15 people for more than three decades. There is only one option to visit by paved road. It is, in every sense of the word, out there.

Getting to Masterson from my home in Chicago would be no small task for our small pickup truck. Negotiating stays with friends along the way, my route on paper looked to be about 2,500 miles of driving through nine states, almost all of it via highway. Surely something would go wrong badly enough to write about?

The Drive

Leg 1: Chicago to Nashville

In the grand tradition of fathers everywhere, let’s talk about the weather. December’s extratropical cyclone that gripped much of the U.S. and featured dramatic temperature drops, whiteout conditions, thousands of flight cancellations and millions of ruined holiday plans started Dec. 22 in Chicago — the day before I’d planned to leave. But with conditions worsening (and given the all-clear to sign off from work early), I revised my timeline and departed around 1 p.m. as temps were plunging and the first heavy snowfall started.

I’d piloted Best of the Year vehicles through whiteouts before, but this was worse. With the storm blowing east, I spent nearly nine hours and almost 500 miles behind the wheel in an unenviable mix of sleet, rain and snow. Even on the interstates, where traffic opened up and wind was stiff enough to keep roads clear, conditions were appalling; snow swirled across the pavement and the Maverick’s rear window rattled incessantly.

Because speeds were lower than they would’ve been in better weather, fuel economy on this first leg paradoxically turned out to be the best of the journey: Stopping outside Elizabethtown, Ky., for my first fill-up, the trip computer read 34.9 mpg over 347 miles — nearly 2 mpg clear of the Maverick’s EPA highway estimate.

Leg 2: Nashville to Oklahoma

Following a relaxed day of sandwiches at Duke’s, snagging cans to go at Monday Night Preservation Co. and cheering on some Predators hockey downtown, I picked my youngest brother up from the airport midafternoon Christmas Eve and hit the road under sunny skies and greatly improved conditions. For legal reasons, I had to drive, so he had to keep us entertained with Christmas music and some of the most, uh, vivacious AM radio sermons I’ve heard until we stopped overnight in Memphis.

No trip to the Home of the Blues would be complete without a walk down Beale Street, and we also managed to stop by Stax Records Christmas morning long enough for a photo before skipping town. (I’ll have to return for the barbecue.) Most of the day was spent following Interstate 40 west to Oklahoma City, where we checked into our hotel and did little else in anticipation of a Boxing Day drive headed a hundred miles back east to marvel at the fifth tallest statue in the U.S. and belatedly celebrate Christmas with friends in Tulsa. After an overnight there, we returned to OKC Dec. 27 to see the barns of the world’s largest A2 dairy herd and catch a Thunder basketball game.

The next day, my brother had to get home to New York and his friend had to get home to Tulsa. The final stretch west was up to me.

Leg 3: Oklahoma to Masterson

By a sample size of less than 24 hours, I’d say Texas is the most blustery state in the union. Wind advisories issued for the Panhandle suggested sustained winds up to 40 mph with gusts up to 65 mph; after opening the Maverick’s driver-side door to get out for fuel in Shamrock and immediately being blown back into the cabin, I’d say those numbers sound about right. The lack of anything around to stop such high winds didn’t just affect me, though: With open roads and 80 mph speed limits, fuel economy during one part of this leg was the lowest recorded entry since our very first one back in February 2022: just 24.6 mpg on the trip computer over the course of 270 miles.

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Nevertheless, the Maverick and I persisted. When I arrived in Amarillo and checked into a hotel down the street from the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame & Museum, my itinerary was down to just dinner and visiting Masterson the next morning. I could see the woman behind the desk eyeing my driver’s license and explained the plan. Her response summed up the majority opinion of this trip:

“Yeah … I’m not about to see that through.”

But after an oversized burger at Six Car and a decent night’s sleep, the half-hour drive north on U.S. Route 87 finally got me where I wanted to go. Since it’s about as close as you can get to being just a name on a map, I drove down the one street on which sat the only free-standing building not associated with the natural-gas compressor station, took the photo you see at the top, then left — another bucket list item for the books.

Leg 4: The Ride Home

The thing about a trip like this is you can become so fixated on simply getting there that it’s easy to dismiss the logistics of getting back. But a thousand miles from home, I hit the road and eventually landed overnight in the Queen City of the Ozarks, the birthplace of Route 66, the 417: Springfield, Mo.

A final stop for gas and lunch the next day in St. Louis amid a light drizzle, the first bad weather I’d encountered since leaving Chicago, was all she wrote for a trip that ultimately ended up being 2,847 miles across nine states at a total fuel cost of $317.32. Infuriatingly for work purposes, the rattling rear window and fluctuating fuel economy was as exciting as it got with the Maverick. Despite bad weather and consistent climate-control usage, up to three occupants and even stretches on unpaved rural roads, I never got out feeling stiff or more tired than I thought I’d be. We’ve said it before and we’re gonna say it again before we sell it off, but: This truck delivers. We have the miles, the receipts and the (many ridiculous) memories to prove it.

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