Sage Brush and Cotton Fields

On Monday, we left Oklahoma, without looking back. We didn't really like Oklahoma, though I know that we're judging a whole state on very limited data. First of all, we were really put off by all of the very negative political advertising on TV. Yes, it's true that many races around the USA have been reduced to mudslinging, but in OK, Michael and I got the feeling that these folks would still be battling after the election is over.

The other thing that made us dislike Oklahoma was the laundry situation. ;) We had to do laundry, and the campground where we were had just two washers and two dryers. With 6 loads to do, we clearly needed a different solution. We headed into the village of El Reno and found a laundromat. People were actually smoking in there! Kids... freshly washed laundry... and smoking. What's wrong with this picture?

And one of the washers spit grease onto one of my favorite white t-shirts. Oh.. and the machines stole 50 cents from us. So we disliked Oklahoma on this trip.

Yesterday I drove 345 miles, taking us to Lubbock, Texas. The weather changed drastically during the day. We awoke in Oklahoma on Sunday to rain and 50 degree chill. Monday morning, we had thick fog, but it lifted by the time we got into Drive.

The terrain and view has changed dramatically too. While Missouri was red and orange with oaks, Oklahoma was yellow and green, and we couldn't tell what kinds of trees there were. Now here in the TX panhandle, we've seen sagebrush, yucca, and fields of cotton plants!

Michael took these pictures when we were on the way to Oklahoma:




And when we arrived in Lubbock, we broke out our T-shirts, enjoying tempes in the upper 70's! We did a little maintenance work today, vacuuming, shaking out all rugs, emptying the tanks, and getting up on the ladder and cleaning the windshield.

Here's our campground in Lubbock:


Michael working on the water hookup
Eddie is a happy cat!

We went walking ydy at the campground here. Today, We had hoped to walk the Texas Tech campus, but were disappointed by the seeming chaotic construction everywhere we looked. It just didn't seem walkable. So we went down and walked the perimeter of the mall with Maddy, and it was fine. We were searching for shade, though, because it was so warm!

We drove around in the countryside and I took this shot of a cottonfield. We've seen thousands of acres of cotton on this trip. We figure we've probably seen it often, but just never have seen it at harvest time.