Lonely WTX HWY thread!

I shot this first foto a few years back on US 90 in between Marathon and Alpine, TX. This 20ish foot tall yucca was an icon, known to locals and travelers alike, standing taller than anything for miles above the few scrubs of desert flora around it, (1/11)

like a sentinel watching cars go by, one every hour or so, for decades. I called it yuccapelli, for its resemblance to the fertility deity, Kokopelli, and it made me smile every time I'd pass it on that lonesome stretch of highway.
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A year or so ago, (2/11)

the notorious w-i-n-d of Far West Texas got the best of it and snapped it in two, the top half dangling to the ground but still attached, a gruesome scene for sure. It was thought by most to have suffered a tragic but unavoidable fate, (3/11)

sad but not at all surprising to anyone paying attention to everything else out here.
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The other day on my way through, I had planned a stop to capture what's left of the former "world's smallest Target store", (4/11)

an old cinder block building owned by the railroad that an unknown artist adorned with a Target logo in a supposed reply to the Prada Marfa installation farther west in Valentine. Both of those installations have become the stuff of internet legend, (5/11)

drawing folks from around the planet with Instagram dreams to take virtually the same foto over and over again. Too many at the tiny fake Target, perhaps, that it had become a safety concern as the already abond. The yucca, however, got little more than a nod at 75+ mph, (6/11)

but was perhaps the greatest of them all, for its majesty, longevity, steadfastness, nonchalance.
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I thought of the yucca as I got near where it once stood, and decided to stop and do a sort of remake of the first foto, (7/11)

even though I thought it was dead and it was only a few hours after sunrise rather than at sunset like the other. To my surprise though, the yucca hadn't died at all, (8/11)

and was sporting quite a bit of new green growth from within what I was sure was its carcass not that long ago. Second foto is from just the other day, around 10am and not a silhouette, (9/11)

and obviously quite different from the other image but thought you might dig it as a companion to the first.
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Also included in this set are fotos of the current state of the ruins of the tiny Target and the even more tiny @lego Target someone left behind. (10/11)

Most importantly though, Yucapelli lives! (fin!)