Goodbye Texas - Hello New Mexico - Apr 2007

Springtime in Texas (as in many other places in the midwest) can generate severe weather at any time. We try and keep an eye on the weather and plan our travel days accordingly. Our goal was to get out of west Texas as quickly as possible - especially after reading about the recent devastating tornadoes in Kansas. We left Llano and the lovely Hill Country behind and made a dash across the flat and barren west Texas plains. We stopped for an overnighter in Brownfield, Texas and stayed at a free city park that was ok for a one nighter. Can you figure out how they got the name Brownfield from this photo?

Another flat stretch of highway -- guess what the nearby town was named? LEVELAND -- how imaginative! In addition to oil wells, it seems like the major crop was cotton. The fields must have been getting ready to be planted because there wasn't much of anything green and growing. We passed a cotton gin in the itty bitty town of Needmore. On the side of the building was written "Needmore Gin" -- too funny.

This was about the only interesting thing to look at all day. Those windmills were huge. Look how they tower over the telephone poles. The road went right past one and that was the closest we'd ever been to one.

We reached Ute Lake State Park and got a roomy site with a view to the lake. It was just an ok campground -- nothing all that special, but a good place to stop for a couple of nights. It had a large bird population and we saw huge flocks of yellow-headed blackbirds scavenging the field right next to our rv. The thing we didn't like -- stickers, lots and lots of stickers. The poor doggies could hardly take three steps without picking up a few.