Welcome to Texas, Partner!

November 5, 2013

We left Tucumcari, New Mexico this morning at about 10:30 for the 110 mile drive to Amarillo, Texas.  Boy, Texas is big wide open country!  It was about 40 miles from Tucumcari to the New Mexico - Texas border, then 70 miles east to Amarillo.  After all the mountains and rocks of Utah and New Mexico, this is really wide open and very flat.  I haven't noticed any 'rest areas' along the route in Texas, but there are 'picnic areas' about every 20-30 miles on I-40E.  These picnic areas are simply that, a covered piece of cement with a picnic table.   There are no restrooms or other facilities, but I wanted to stop at one of them so I could take a couple of photos of the immensity of this Texas panhandle.   And, take a look at the wind farms - thousands of windmills producing 9.2% of the electricity generated in Texas during 2012 (wikipedia); Texas produces the most wind power of any U.S. state.

This first photo was taken right next to the Interstate; I cropped the roadway out of the photo but it gives an idea of the vastness of these flat lands

This is taken from exactly the same spot looking towards the east.  See the little picnic pavilion

I've decided to stay several days in Amarillo (not pronounced the Spanish way where the LL is pronounced Y).  The man at the RV park corrected my pronunciation,  Oops.  

My son-in-law, David, emailed last night to suggest that I try to get a free steak dinner while I'm here.  I guess it's about the billboards, all along the Interstate, that claim that your meal will be FREE if you can eat the whole steak.  That's a 72-ounce steak!!!  I'm thinking I won't take on that challenge!  

There seems to be lots of things to check out here and I hope to have some good photos to share.

Catch ya' later, partner....