What a great morning temperature wise! The humidity of yesterday was blasted away by the tremendous thunder and lightening storm last night and the early part of today was cool and the sky was clear blue.
It was sad to be leaving without seeing two of our friends at Luckenback, Virgil and T-Bob, but we left a message for them and said we may be back next year.
After coffee we headed north and then west. We came through the little town of Mason, the Main Street looks like it was set up for a western movie set, complete with wooden boardwalks, a big old heritage building right in the middle of town and businesses like a saloon, a hardware store and a 5 and 10 cent store. On our way we see signs for deer processing and for taxidermy, and there are ranches that offer hunting guides, and everything associated with the hunt, some of them stocking deer. We also see a crop that we have never seen except in books or movies.....cotton! It is quite a short plant and at first I thought it was potatoes but after staring at it for miles I came to realize it was cotton.
Lots of traffic on the roads today, fortunately most of our route is on divided highway, still just two lanes each side and everyone is passing us. I notice almost everyone (males) is wearing a cowboy hat. Western attire is the norm, hats and generally all wear cowboy boots, some even with spurs.
This part of Texas (around Midway and Odessa) is oil country and the business is booming , therefore prices are higher in restaurants, hotels are busier, trucks are dirtier.
While riding along I see lots of mistletoe growing in the trees. I found out that mistletoe really does grow in a round ball. You probably remember a small round ball hanging in the doorway of a New Years party house. Well as you drive along the roadways in some states in the south....Arizona and Texas being the two I have seen it. What happens is, a bird eats the mistletoe berry, then it poops in a different tree, the seed from his poop grows in the crook or branch of the host tree. The mistletoe is a life sucking plant and it takes all the nutrients from the tree, the mistletoe thrives and the tree eventually dies if the mistletoe is not cut out. We regularly remove mistletoe from a tree in Our courtyard in Arizona. I feel the roadside trees are doomed as no one is cutting out the mistletoe.
As we travel along I see great white windmill farms up on the hills turning lazily in the mild breeze. They remind me of the pilgrimsfour hiking up up up to them on the Camino and then down down down on the opposite side. I still shake my head over how we did it!
At about 3:30 we arrived in Big Spring. Big Spring was so named because it had a big spring......surprise! When the wagon trains were migrating west they came across the big spring and because water was/is essential many people settled here. So many wells were dug and eventually the water was depleted, today the town of Big Spring has to feed the spring by trucking in the water.
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