TEXAS: SAN ANGELO STATE PARK AND SAN ANGELO CONCHO RIVER WALK

 March 22, 2021

Bob wanted to get up early (definitely earlier than I wanted to get up) to visit the I-20 Wildlife Preserve. I decided to sleep in and let him go by himself, and I was glad I did because when he got there, the park was closed and he had to turn around and come back.

We ended up getting on the road at about 9:30, heading southeast towards San Angelo, a distances of about 112 miles. One of the things that makes a driving trip like this one so much fun is that running into quirky things is almost inevitable 

For example, we saw this huge metal thing being towed down the road that looked like an airplane wing. Bob figured out that it was a blade of a electricity-generating windmill. I read that the blades of a turbine windmill are 120 feet long. I can't imagine turning the corner with one of these in tow.

The signs in the fields were pretty quirky.

And how about the totem pole made of antlers? Pretty quirky, right?

TEXAS, MIDLAND AND ODESSA: THE PERMIAN BASIN PETROLEUM MUSEUM, GEORGE W. BUSH CHILDHOOD HOME, THE MIDLAND PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND THE ODESSA JACKRABBITS

 March 21, 2021

After enjoying our drive through Texas Tech, our delicious lunch, and our visit to the Buddy Holly Center, we headed to Midland, about 120 miles due south of Lubbock. Midland is not located in mid-Texas as its name implies, but rather in West Texas. It was named "Midland" because it was founded as the midway point between Fort Worth and El Paso on the railroad that connected those two cities. Its biggest claim to fame has to do with THE Bush family, but more on that later.

Midland is located in the Permian Basin, a large sedimentary basin  that includes a lot of oil fields, so it makes sense that Midland is the home of the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, which didn't sound all that exciting, but we needed a break on a long drive, so we decided to stop there. 

Appropriately, the museum has an oil rig in its front yard.

Posts outside of the museum are topped with engraved granite markers that give a timeline of oil production from 400 BC to the present day.

TEXAS, LUBBOCK: TEXAS A&M, LUNCH, AND THE BUDDY HOLLY CENTER

 March 21, 2021

After our beautiful sunrise drive through Palo Duro Canyon National Park, we got on the road and headed due south to Lubbock, a drive of about 110 miles. 

Lubbock has a population of about a quarter-million and was named after Thomas Saltus Lubbock, former Texas Ranger and Civil War Confederate Colonel. He was also the brother of Francis Lubbock, governor of Texas during the Civil War.

Our first stop was to look around Texas Tech University, founded in Lubbock in 1923 and currently home to about 40,000 students. We enjoy visiting universities and always try to at least drive by or through the better-known ones on our trips.  Bob especially likes to take a look at the football stadiums. Texas Tech has a big one ("Everything's big in Texas"), the Jones AT&T Stadium. It holds 60,862 fans.

West side facade and entrance

Not far from the stadium is a small herd of Texas longhorn cattle. 

Unlike the ones we had seen earlier grazing in the fields, it is safe to cuddle up to these fellers.

TEXAS PANHANDLE: PALO DURO CANYON PART II, THE STATE PARK

March 21, 2021

I took a picture of this quote when we visited the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum because I am a Georgia O'Keeffe fan. 

When I got home and ran across it in my photos, I Googled "Georgia O'Keeffe Palo Duro Canyon" and found out that the artist I had always associated with New Mexico and New York actually taught art in the public schools in  Amarillo, Texas, from 1912 to 1914. In 1916 she became the chair of the art department of West Texas State Normal College (now West Texas A&M University) in Canyon, Texas, where the Panhandle Museum (and this quote) is located. It was during the next year and a half in Texas that her art evolved towards abstraction, particularly her landscapes.

She painted 51 watercolors during this time, many of them abstract expressionist landscapes of Palo Duro Canyon, a place she often visited for inspiration. She called the canyon "a slit in nothingness," but another time she wrote that "the plains' . . . feeling of bigness just carries me away." And of a hike in the canyon she said, "I was very small and very puny and helpless, and all around was so big and impossible."

Canyon with Crows (1917) from here

L: Alfred Stieglitz's photo of Georgia O'Keeffe in front of her charcoal drawing of Palo Duro Canyon
R: No 15 Special (1916-1917), painting of the canyon

Here are two versions of O'Keeffe's Light Coming on the Plains (1917), painted during her time in Canyon.

TEXAS PANHANDLE: BUFFALO LAKE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, THE PANHANDLE PLAINS HISTORICAL MUSEUM, PANHANDLE QUIRKS

 March 20, 2021

Our first stop of the day was a trip to Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge, 7,664 acres of protected prairies, marshes, and woodlands. 

Roadside sign on our way to the refuge

Once inside the park, we drove on a dirt road (Bob's favorite kind of road) that made a giant loop. The unimpressive scenery mostly looked like this:

We saw all of these signs, but didn't have the opportunity to avoid treading on any of these critters:

After this not-too-exciting foray into what didn't seem to be much of a refuge (at least in my opinion--Bob may feel otherwise), we headed to the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum. Built in 1933, it is part of the West Texas A&M University campus in the town of Canyon.

TEXAS PANHANDLE: CAPROCK CANYONS STATE PARK AND FINE DINING IN AMARILLO

March 19, 2021 

Not far from Palo Duro Canyon is another state park, Caprock Canyons, which was established in 1982. It is 15,314 acres, just 1,088 acres smaller than the 16,402 acres of Palo Duro State Park.

One of this canyon's claims to fame is that it is the home of part of the state's official bison herd. At one time, the Texas plains were covered with bison, but by 1888 there were fewer than 1,000 bison in the entire state. Some individuals and groups undertook extensive conservation efforts, and eventually the Texas State Bison Herd (yes, that is their formal name) grew to a half-million head.  

In 1996, 32 bison were moved to Caprock Canyons State Park, and the herd now numbers 150. Not a bad growth rate for 25 years. I wish my stock portfolio did as well. By comparison, however, there is a herd of 3,000 bison in Yellowstone Park.

Right off the bat, we were introduced to our first bison.

Visitors' Center

Oops, I had already broken the rules.

As soon as we left the visitors' center parking lot, we ran into the grazing part of the herd, figuratively speaking. Apparently they didn't read the rule about staying far away from US.

TEXAS PANHANDLE: PALO DURO CANYON PART I AND QUITAQUE

  March 19-20, 2021

One of the carrots that Bob used to entice me to travel to the panhandle of Texas was talk of Palo Duro Canyon. At 120 miles long, an average of 6 miles wide, and 820 feet deep at its deepest point, it is the second largest canyon in the United States behind only the Grand Canyon. It surprised me that I had never heard of it.

After visiting the Slug Bug Ranch, we made our way across the ever-so-flat Texas prairie, where the wind that once swept all the topsoil into the air to create lethal clouds of dust in the 1930s now powers huge windmills.

This is the best aerial view of the canyon that I could find (and it was on Pinterest without any attribution). You can see how the land just drops off into the canyon, and how the canyon looks like tendrils or tentacles creeping across the land. 

In the canyon itself, it doesn't feel ominous at all. In fact, it is pretty glorious.

The state park part of the canyon is relatively small--maybe a 10-mile stretch or so--and on this first foray we were near the state park but not within its borders. (We were planning a visit there the next day.) I'm not sure why the entire canyon isn't part of the state park--just too big?  Anyway, our first stop was at a picnic area on a hill. From the top of the road we had almost a 270° view.