Texas 2023:
Day 3 - Lubbock
Day 3 - Lubbock
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Monday, January 23, 2023: We awoke to a gorgeous sunrise over the lake. |
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Steam rolled off the lake, and there were lots and lots of birds chirping away in the early morning sunshine. |
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Does it get any better than this? |
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Breakfast was oatmeal with a side of Mountain Dew VooDEW Mystery Flavor. We never did identify what the mystery flavor was, but it was perfectly lovely what ever it was supposed to be. |
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We packed up and were on the road around 10 AM. The previous night, we had checked the weather forecast for the next few days and saw that a huge snowstorm was headed for west Texas on Monday night and continuing through the day on Tuesday. Our next two campgrounds were right in the path of the storm, so we cancelled them and booked a hotel in Lubbock, Texas, to ride it out. |
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We drove past the town of Lawton, Oklahoma, and Fort Sill Army Base, and saw the Lawton VOR by the side of the highway. |
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Just before 11 AM, we crossed the Red River, ... |
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... and entered the state of Texas. Their slogan always cracks us up. |
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Our route took us through Wichita Falls, Texas, ... |
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... where we stopped at Dairy Queen for lunch. We think there are as many Dairy Queens in Texas as there are gas stations. |
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We both ordered the steak fingers combo. We had been looking forward to steak fingers since we learned, a little too late, that they were on the Texas Dairy Queen menu on our last trip. While they weren't bad, they didn't compare to the steak fingers we've had in Idaho, which was what we were hoping for. These are basically narrow portions of chicken-fried ground steak. |
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A little more than an hour after lunch, we were surprised and delighted to find this beautiful rest area on US-82 just west of Seymour, Texas. |
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Debbie loves ranch signs and can't resist taking photos of them. This one is a little plain, but looks good against the clear blue sky. |
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The landscape was starting to look canyon-like, with wind turbines dotting the countryside. |
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We stopped for gas and a clean windshield in the tiny town of Benjamin, Texas. |
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Letterkenny fans may pronounce the Dickens Rodeo Arena in a slightly different way from the locals. |
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There was nice neon on the Tips Liquor sign in Dickens, Texas. |
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We had the road mostly to ourselves, with only a few other cars and trucks to be seen. |
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Check out the stylized "B" above the Bridwell Ranch sign. |
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The Texas Plains Trail ran along our route. The trail covers 50,000 square miles of short grass prairies and canyons from just north of Amarillo to just south of Lubbock. |
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Sheep! We will now consider them honorary goats, since they are performing the task of standing on hay bales usually performed by goats. |
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Check out this unusually-shaped silo. It looks like a giant stone milk jug. |
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There were prarie dogs covering every square foot of this field, ... |
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... and this one in front of a bar. We know they are pests, but they look so cute in other people's yards. |
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Cotton! As we approached the eastern edge of Lubbock, there was cotton debris clinging to everything. |
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We drove right by the American Windmill Museum, but alas, we didn't stop. |
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We did stop at the Buddy Holly Center to get a picture of this awesome statue, ... |
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... to read about his life growing up in Lubbock, ... |
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... and to get this picture of the statue of Buddy across the street, in front of the Lubbock and West Texas Area Walk of Fame. |
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There was an arts district in the next block, and we circled it looking at the murals and sculptures on the buildings. |
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The Cactus Theater had a great looking ad for Dr. Pepper painted on the side of the building. |
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It wouldn't be complete without a mural of the famous Buddy Holly and the Crickets. |
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We weren't surprised by the look of the guy driving this Ghostbusters car |
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This bronze statue, titled West Texas Pioneer Family, depicts the early settlers to this region with a man carrying a hoe, a woman carrying a Bible, and a boy carrying a rope. It was designed by Granville Carter and placed here in 1971. |
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Check out all of the mistletoe in this tree! That's a cool building next to it too. |
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This area was dedicated to 5/11/1970, the day huge tornadoes devastated Lubbock, and had twisted lamp post sculptures and a lovely water feature. |
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Just before 3 PM, we checked in to the Days Inn and Suites in Lubbock, Texas, our home for the next two nights. |
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The sky was starting to cloud up but it still looked like a perfectly lovely day. |
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Tom took the opportunity to watch the livestream of Booster 7 and Starship 24's wet dress rehearsal going on at SpaceX's launch facility in Boca Chica. We watched the coverage of the event, kept checking the weather for the approaching storm, microwaved some mac & cheese for dinner, and lazed about in our hotel room until we went to sleep. |
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Tuesday, January 24, 2023: The forecasted snowstorm did not disappoint, blowing through overnight and dropping several inches of heavy, wet snow. |
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We headed downstairs for breakfast around 8:30 AM, enjoying waffles and juice but not taking a single photograph. Back in the room, we decided to drink the Mountain Dew Purple Thunder that we had picked up somewhere on our previous trip. |
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While we were getting gas the day before, Tom noticed that the front passenger tire had a big chunk missing from the sidewall and had been concerned about it. With the snowstorm, we decided that today would be a good day to give one of the local tire stores some business. There was a good three or four inches of snow on the van, and we were very glad that we had bought an ice scraper. |
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Can you tell where we had parked? |
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Five minutes after arriving at Discount Tire, the van was already up on the rack with the old tires removed. Tom was the only customer there, and they were delighted that he had decided to come in. |
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Almost exactly one hour after he had left the hotel, Tom was back with four new tires and food from Raising Cane's. It was time for Elevensies. Do you know about that? |
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By 1:30 PM, the snow had stopped coming down and was starting to melt. |
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We spent the day working on the website, watching the livestream of Rocket Lab launching their Electron rocket from Virginia, playing Scrabble, and generally relaxing. We had macaroni and cheese for dinner, with microwave popcorn as an after-dinner treat, and then gathered the stuff in our hotel room for tomorrow's departure and the continuation of our road trip. |
Copyright © Deborah Schilling/Thomas Bundy