In the Dust Bowl

Leaving Arlington, TX this morning at 60 degrees felt great!

We always do the "idiot walk" as we leave a hotel room, peering into every corner to make sure we haven't left anything behind. The hallway carpet in this very nice, new Hilton Garden Inn has a pattern that weaves back and forth across the hallway, providing a nice visual reminder in case you've forgotten to check your room.

Driving through West Texas , there is a lot of open space and not much else. We've left the foothills and are back in the flats, the favorite home of the "White 3-Winged Windmill". They do not migrate south for the winter, so they're everywhere! The "Black, 4-bar Linkage Oil Jack" must be on the endangered list here as we've only seen a very few.

78 degrees in Snyder, TX, where we stopped for lunch at a nice little dive (my favorite type of place) called Taqueria Guadalajara. Enchiladas Suizas for me and Tacos al Pastor for Bob. Good, but I'm still on the hunt for the pinnacle of enchiladas Suizas.

We are on an undivided, 2-lane road for the next 198 miles. Speed limit is 75.

There are many fields that look freshly plowed, ready for planting cotton. Cows and oil jacks coexist happily. Moving irrigation pipes create crop circles. A dust devil appears in the distance and just as rapidly disappears. The first tumbleweed of the trip hits the car. The wind picks up and blows a curtain of dust across the road, reminding us that we are driving through part of the "dust bowl" described in the Ken Burns documentary.

There is so much of nothing out here when you compare it to the east coast. The small towns we pass through on I-20 are very linear (everything is right along the highway). Every other business has something to do with oil.

As we approach Carlsbad, our stop for the night, we are able to see the Guadalupe Mountains in the distance. We'll be driving alongside them tomorrow after we leave the caverns.

Tonight we are staying in the best hotel in town, a Hampton Inn, and had dinner at the best restaurant in town, a Chili's.

We are now on Mountain Time, so we can watch The Good Wife and The Mentalist and get to bed early.