ON THE ROAD AGAIN OCTOBER 2017

October 2017 Albuquerque Trip

Great to be back on the road after being “grounded” since March.  Thankful to be alive and for all the prayers, flowers, cards, meals and other thoughts from a wonderfully supportive group.  It made quite a difference! THANK YOU!

October 4, 2017

Left the house this morning about 7 AM, heading northwest.  Our first goal will be to pick up Greg’s sister Gwynne at the Albuquerque airport on Saturday, so we will take a few days to get there. 

Today’s drive will be a long one, to Caprock Canyon State Park out in west Texas.  It is overcast and cool and will stay that way with intermittent rain along the way.  We head north on I45 towards Dallas, but turn left on 287N around Ennis.  This road turns and twists its way through ranchland and through Fort Worth.  Then is sort of parallels the border with Oklahoma and the Red River, as we go through Witchita and more of “Tornado Alley”.  We note that some of the rest stops in this area feature tornado shelters!  But this isn’t the season….thankfully.  All the little towns have flags flying at half mast for the Las Vegas victims.

Soon, in addition to horse and cattle ranches there are hundreds of wind turbines and fields and fields of cotton.  Interesting plant as it has some flowers and some “bulbs” which I assume will yield the cotton bolls.

Heavy rain near Quanah and Childress and the streets through town are a mess.  As someone explains, they really don’t plan for drainage on these roads because the need is so infrequent.

There are many county roads off of this one, most of which are quite a mess from the rain.  I don't think this guy was stuck, but moving very slowly.

  After passing through Turkey, Texas (home of country musician Bob Willis) State Park and the rain dwindles.  

we reach Caprock Canyon State Park. A roadrunner scrambles across the road to welcome us.  We choose a campsite at the far reaches of the park and are the only campers there – it is mostly for tenters and this rain has kept them away as many sites are muddy.

We see a few bison near the visitor’s center.These are genetically related to the herds that the Goodnights created in the late 1800’s when they became aware that the bison were being hunted to extinction.  Many of the herds throughout the country use this stock.  There are about 160 here and they have free range of the park except for a few (12) males that are in a large fenced areas.  These are being culled to manage the herd size and will most likely be sold to other herds for stud.

 

We wander and wonder through the park which has beautiful red rock formations.

Salads, cheese and crackers for dinner.