Blowing into Lubbock

Lubbock, TX is all about wind. When we came though last year we were practically blown off the road and landed at a campground 20 miles short of our destination. Mr. Dreamy measured gusts of 50 mph. I am still finding pockets of Texas dust that found its way into the motorhome on that trip.

Mr. Dreamy is measuring the windspeed in 2016

This year the land was damp and the winds were manageable, and we made it to our destination. We had followed the same trail as last year: Jacksonville to Pensacola. Pensacola to Beaumont. Beaumont to Lake Medina, and from there into Lubbock. We spent two days at Lake Medina visiting with our friends Carlos and Donna. We enjoyed good food and good fellowship. Leaving our friends is always sad, but we were looking forward to a visit with Adventure Caravan friends, Gayle & Wes when we blew into Lubbock.

Gayle and Wes were great tour leaders. They picked us up at the campground and took us out to dinner at Cagle’s Steak House. This historic restaurant on the outskirts of the city serves mesquite grilled ribeye steaks. It is a huge operation and must have a huge following despite its location out in the fields surrounding Lubbock. The fields around the city are most often planted in cotton. In Lubbock cotton is king. In fact, this area boasts the largest contiguous cotton growing region in the world, according to Internet sources! As we came into the city we could see that fields were being readied for planting. Gayle and Wes took us by the huge expanse of cotton warehouses, and the cotton gin plants. The size of the piles of cotton seeds outside the gin was mind numbing.

This pic, from the Internet, shows one of three or four piles of cotton seed!!!

Its funny how things connect. The Elvis tribute at our recent Tiffin Rally included some great music by a Buddy Holly look-alike, who at one time worked in Vegas.

Lubbock is Buddy Holly’s home town. Although we stopped for lunch near the Buddy Holly museum we didn’t go in. We chose, instead, to go to the Silent Wings Museum. This facility, housed in one of Lubbock’s former airports, details the use of gliders in World War II.

I found it fascinating. Perhaps even more so as I will be heading to France soon, and will have an opportunity to visit Normandy, one of the areas where gliders played a pivotal part in the war. Another dot connected!

Our friends thought we might enjoy visiting the American Wind Power Center. We certainly did! The center has over 150 windmills on display. Every shape, every size and every color. There are wood windmills, including a replica of one of he first windmills constructed near Jamestown, VA.

There was also a collection of doll houses that had been donated to the museum by a husband and wife who had made each model over the past 40 years. The collection was awesome, in the true sense of the word.

Where Cotton is King

The diversity in Texas always amazes me.... but then again, when one is traveling through a state that is... well... the size of Texas, it shouldn’t be a surprise!

As we drove south from Amarillo we came into a region where cotton is king. There were extensive cotton fields on either side of the road, looking very much like the snowy prairie we had so recently left behind. 

Most of the fields had already been picked, and some were dotted with huge bales of cotton, topped with humongous tarps. 

This photo shows the bales at the top, an area of the field that has been picked in the middle, and cotton still waiting to be picked.

It turns out I was wrong (again)... and learned something new (again)! What looked like 'bales' of cotton is, in actuality called a "module". A module holds 13-15 bales, each of which weighs about 500 pounds. The modules are transported to the gin yard in trucks that slide the entire module into the bed.

source

This truck is backing up in order to slide the module on board. Rollers on the bottom of the truck slide under the module and help load. 

Texas is the leading cotton producing state, and the US is third in production, behind India and China. 

This information, and other interesting facts about cotton, can be found at the National Cotton Council's Web site.