Tue, Oct 26, 2010

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The day of the windmill.

Our room in Clayton, NM was nice and the continental breakfast was again, as we have had several times, a hot breakfast with eggs, sausage, biscuits etc…  After getting a second cup of coffee for the road we were ready to go.  The snow and wind storm of yesterday had moved on to other parts of the country and the sun was bright and the skies blue.  We were glad to see this change.

Clayton, NM is only about 10 miles from the Texas state line.  So very soon after leaving this morning we were in Texas.  You can spend days just driving across Texas and we have done that many times. So we were in search of a road that would take us in a generally southern direction that we had not taken.  We decided on State Highway 70 but would have to do a little driving to get to it. 

 This part of Texas is known as the Panhandle and it is a moderately dry area on the high plains.  There are long vistas and ample supplies of wind.  This accounts for the fact that this area is one of the fastest growing areas utilizing “wind farms”.  But the earlier windmills of days gone by are what Charles and I love to see.  Because of the dryness and the lack of open water, windmills are abundant in this portion of Texas and so began our “day of the windmill”.  The oldest windmill structures were wooden but it is getting harder and harder to find wooden windmills still in operation.  Most of the windmills we see now are metal and lack some of the character of those earlier windmills.  Still, it is better than no windmills at all.  

One of the appeals of a working windmill is the click, click swooshing sound they make as the blades above turn and the sucker rod moves up and down pulling the water below up and into a pipe this pushing it out into a waiting tank.  It’s a soothing rhythm and a great place to take a nap!

As we made our way down the Panhandle we didn’t have to search too hard to find a number of working windmills and we made it our goal for the day to photograph some of them.  It wasn’t too long until we found a large windmill farm made up of the new huge windmills lined up across the landscape. 

We took a couple of dirt road side trips with the last one being thru the famous JA Ranch which is located in the Palo Duro Canyon.  This canyon is the second largest canyon in the US…of course the Grand Canyon being the largest.  It is over 100 miles long and is over 20 miles wide in places.  Not as dramatic as the Grand Canyon it is still beautiful and you can drive thru it. 

Once thru the Canyon we were on Highway 70 for the remainder of the day.  It turned out to be a really really nice drive and a good road with almost no traffic.  We drove over 150 miles on it going thru numerous small Texas towns and ending our drive for today in Sweetwater, TX.

We have a nice room again tonight and are doing well.  We hope that you all are too!

Peace, Hope & Love,

Donna, Charles, Paris & Dodger