I am riding with my laptop computer that is of course Flamingo Pink to go with the Silver Dog House, on my lap. Today I will repeat the running commentary as we go.
(Now that I am editing these entries in August I do not much like the format but for this days of long drives I will leave them as they are)
Now we are seeing a few fields that have short dark stems from last year and white “trash” lying about. Cotton! I think these are the cotton fields that our Nephew D told us that they are starting to grow some.
The sky to the south is very threatening – solid gray, and it is windy - it is always windy it seems out west.
11:06 AM Large rain drops are hitting the windshield, and there is hail mixed in!!! we have pulled to the off the side of the road and are creeping along the shoulder. Hail sure sounds big on the roof of the truck. It looks pea size for the most part. We have stopped on the shoulder to sit it out. One car stopped across from us but moved on very shortly. Now it is mostly raining with just an occasional hail stone. There is one lightening flash and a bit of thunder. The rain is beginning to let up. - FLASH – every once in a while a rain drop sounds big – hope that is – FLASH – not any more hail.
11:18 We decide to move on, it is still raining hard but no hail now. Now the sky ahead is lighter and the rain is letting up a bit.
We just passed an old Airstream. Now that we are "streamers" we notice others and see more than we used to because we weren't looking before.
Whew 11:30 rain has let up and pavement is just damp here. That storm is the worst wind and rain with hail we have weathered with the rig.
These huge warm season grass fields are great pheasant habitat. It is very flat with only occasional trees or long lines of classic windbreaks composed of shrubs, with conifers on the south side and deciduous trees on the north side.
11:35 Another storm cell this time we pulled into a roadside park to sit it out, just in case there is more hail. HAIL a work that strikes terror into an Airstreamer's heart. The weather reports are predicting large hail with these storms in south west Kansas and north Oklahoma.
Wow we are going through Greenberg, Kansas in pouring rain. This is the town that was hit by a HUGE Tornado last year and was completely leveled, only the elevator was left. The devastation is still nearly total. Someone has propped a hand lettered sign “we are making tornado history” against a pole beside the road. The John Deere dealership is back up and running. and a few hoses and other buildings are scattered in the rubble. But the trees still look like my memory of news footage of the European theater in WWII.
Geez - It is pouring again and the visibility is terrible. Oh well this is western Kansas the only scenery is wheat fields and pastures and the occasional grain elevator.
This is certainly prairie; the soil is BLACK, and the only trees are in the drainages and around homes and farms, planted as wind breaks. They are haying the warm season grasses.
12:58 the sun is trying to come out thought the clouds are really low, almost fog.
We have left the green wheat fields behind us. Now great expanses of grassland and wheat fields alternate as far as we can see. Yucca is growing in the rough ground between the road and the RR tracks that parallel the highway.
Occasionally there are corn fields with overhead irrigation systems. Great wheeled monsters that pivot around their center point with hoses dangling from the connecting booms so the spray is delivered close to the ground in an effort to prevent as much evaporation as possible.
As we continue west the land continues to change. Now low eroded “badlands” are beginning to appear between the fields, more and more of which require irrigation. Sagebrush with the Yucca are beginning to fill uncultivated areas. The land is falling away from the prairie “heights” and it is beginning to look like the west instead of the prairie breadbasket .
4:56 PM We continue to drive through cells of thunderstorms at some point I sure hope we get behind this front. The wind and sometimes hail that comes with the rain are what we should expect from this part of the country.
We stopped at the “Mid-America Air Museum” in Liberal Kansas. The Museum is a very nice collection of non flyable aircraft in a former Beechcraft factory. The whole time we were in the museum the wind blew really hard. The museum has a B-25J Mitchell, a P-51 Mustang, an Avenger, and a really long list of more including everything from Ceasnas to an F-105.
The very nice lady at the museum offered to let us camp overnight in their parking lot since it was approaching the time of day that sane travelers settle in for the night. I was very tempted to take her offer but DH wanted to press on. He was sure we would find a friendly Wal-Mart parking lot when we connected with I-25 in New Mexico. We only have to get through the panhandle of Oklahoma and a bunch part of New Mexico. When we left we wound up in a really serious blow and pouring rain, again. It was really quite scary.
Now we are headed due west through the middle of the Oklahoma panhandle. New Mexico is about 90 miles ahead. The sun is shining with blue sky overhead and ahead, and the storms are behind us at last.
The country here is as absolutely flat as the proverbial pancake, mostly light tan colored range land and only occasional trees where there are houses but they are scattered far and few between. Occasionally a filed is plowed but it is really very barren looking. This is probably what our nephews were calling UGLY country. I think it sort of interesting if only because it is so alien to our experience.
When we crossed into new Mexico the landscape changed almost abruptly to look so much more like "out west". Instead of flat deep soils now bedrock is exposed, rolling hills covered with sage and yucca falling to dry stream beds paved with cobble. There are lots of Pronghorn in the fenced pastures. Surely Pronghorn are not the livestock these fences are for, where are the cattle?
When we eventually connected with I-25 there was nothing but the exchange, no Wal-Mart, not gas, no buildings at all. So on we go headed south looking for gas and an place to spend the night. Each exit was bleaker than the last - nothing along I-25 south.
Finally at 9:00 PM when it was nearly dark, we pulled off at Wagon Mound, New Mexico, Here is a tiny town and two gas stations. The one we picked was automated with not a soul in sight but there was an abandoned restaurant next door. The old unpaved parking area provided a place to park for the night. We turned on a minimum of lights, made and ate a tuna salad and crawled into bed. Wouldn't you know it? We picked a place next to a RR switch. Fortunately there was only one noisy train and we slept pretty well, even though Duncan got DH up twice during the night.
We were up early the next morning and found another vehicle had used the same lot to spend the night.
Here is the mound that this very small town must be named after.
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