North, West and Up!!!

It's Tuesday morning and the Leos woke up on Central Time, but are currently in the Mountain Time Zone, so we have some time to kill before we hit the road again. Seems like a good time to blog.

As the photo on the right reveals, the Leos visited one of our favorite places on Saturday before we hit the road. Saturday at the Dallas Farmers' Market is one of the best People Watching sites around. The crowd was out, the weather was perfect and a Dixieland Jazz band was playing on the corner. And the Leos were joined by two of our favorite people...

Doug and Andy. In addition to looking for a "mystery item", Andy was test driving a geocaching application on Doug's smart phone. The mystery item was any fruit or vegetable that Doug had not cooked with before. When found, they would take it home and try to figure out what to do with it. The items that made it into the sack were tomatillos.

The geocaching proved to be somewhat challenging. Andy identified a cach site 700 feet from the cantaloupes. Following the course directed by the smart phone app led us to the middle of the plant market which was identified as ground zero. However, we had no idea what we were looking for, so we didn't find it. Doug and Andy have decided more research is needed to know how the geocaching thing is supposed to work.

Sunday, we hit the road and started out chasing the wild flowers North, West and Up. 

The theory is that by following the blooming of wildflowers north and up in the Spring and the changing of the color of leaves south and down in the Fall, travelers will be able to enjoy comfortable temperatures year round. The flowers were beautiful most of the day on Sunday. However, we found that once we passed Wichita Falls the flowers along the roadside disappeared. I'm not sure what this means. Are we now ahead of the bloom? Is this a result of the drought?  Or, is this the way it is in northwest Texas? Whatever it signifies, we're not turning around. 

At mile 247 we called it a day at the Old Towne Cotton Gin RV Park in Goodlett, TX.  We have been on a steady uphill climb since leaving Glen Heights (elevation 617 feet above sea level) to our Sunday night stop at 1601 feet. 

Old Town Cotton Gin

  

As we traveled further west, wildflowers  were replaced by another prominent feature. Particularly as we passed Amarillo the horizon is dominated by technology.

Around the west Texas town of Vega, wind turbine electric generators are everywhere. The Spinning Spur Wind Farm now has 70 generators, and (as the video shows) at least one windmill. This is a project the includes an $200 million investment by Google.

Just beyond Vega, we crossed into New Mexico.

At mile 495 we called it a day in Tucumcari, NM. We've still been climbing and are now at 4011 feet above sea level. We'd planned to boondock in a Flying J parking lot, but with the temperature in the low 90s and Revolution on TV on Monday nights, we opted to an RV park next door. When boondocking we have no TV or AC. So the $27 to park in the Mountain Road RV Park was worth it.

It's now Tuesday at 9:00 AM Mountain Time, so we're moving on.