We didn't leave austin till 1 or 2 pm, so i got a lot done! Got the outside outlet all squared away (figured out why the other kitchen outlets weren't working: as usual, it was not a coincidence, it was my fault from the previous work). Got up on the roof and cleaned it off a bit.
Yesterday at sunset near Sweetwater, Texas we saw the most amazing number of wind turbines. The BIG kind. As it went to dusk and then dark we were surrounded by hundreds of slowly spinning blades and blinking red lights. We were surprised that we didn’t know about such a large wind farm. We camped on the shore of Colorado City Lake, and every time I awoke I saw hundreds of blinking red lights across the water and a shit load of stars.
Today it got super windy from the Southwest. They were talking about gusts to 40 mph, but it felt like a steady 40 mph to me. Our mileage improved dramatically due to the tailwind when we turned north. We had seen mention of Texas’s Grand Canyon, Palo Duro Canyon, we thought we better check it out, thought we might get out of the wind at the bottom of the canyon. It is still windy down here but it sounds nice from inside the state park cabin we are renting for the night. Very Spartan, but cosy.
We saw numerous groups of wild turkeys on the road in the canyon. They weren’t exactly begging for handouts, but I think they wanted us to know that they were available if we had any extra food. We also saw two coyotes. Well, Beth saw two, I only saw the slow one.
It is now the next day, Saturday, Jan. 23. We finally made it out of Texas, not there was anything wrong with Texas, except it’s too damn big, and the sign Beth saw that said: “Babies are God’s stimulus package.”
Yesterday in Texas we were making 50 mpg with the wind. Today we are driving into the wind and making less than 37 mpg. The car has other excuses for today’s bad mileage – we are going uphill, we are at higher elevation and it is cooler: 46 degrees at 2pm. Plus Beth is driving and she is not as compulsive as I when it comes to maximizing mileage. After a week without, the long underwear is coming back out real soon. Tonite we plan to stay at a house in Santa Fe, courtesy Kathi & Bob’s house swap. Too complicated to explain. Tomorrow some snow sports, I hope.
We have used up our book on tape and listened to all our music at least once and now we are in the middle of No Good Stations Land. To make matters worse, it looks like we won’t be seeing a Cracker Barrel ( for books on cd) for a thousand miles. That’s poor planning…. oh, I forgot that i have an ipod, i better stop complaining.
Snow sports? I want to hear about that.
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