Lubbock, TX

It was one of our longer drives yesterday...at least since we officially arrived in the southern United States. When we arrived in Lubbock, it was in the 70's...sunny and warm. Some of our fellow RVers were running their air-conditioners. I think we've yet to run ours this trip.

There isn't much to say about yesterday's drive, aside from it being long. This part of Texas is desolate. We imagine land is cheap here. We saw the occasional field with random live oaks and bales of straw lying where they'd come off the baler.

Mostly, we saw this...flat land, scrub oak, dry grass, barbed wire fencing, power lines, and the occasional hill rising off in the distance.

After passing through Sweetwater, we began seeing wind turbines. Lots and lots of wind turbines.

We've seen a lot of solar panels here in Texas and in the south, in general, but this is the first significant wind power we've seen. We're kind of partial to renewable energy, and so we always sit up and take notice at a project this size. Eventually, there were hundreds of turbines all around us, stretching to the horizon in all directions.

In fact, when we passed into Sweetwater, I noticed the sign announcing the name of the town was on a large blade of a wind turbine. After driving for 10 miles amongst these giants, we had to see what our friend Google could tell us about this. Our navigation unit said we were in Roscoe, and so I asked Google to tell me about wind turbines in Roscoe, Texas.

We learned that this was the Roscoe Wind Farm which is owned and operated by E.ON Climate & Renewables. It is one of the world's largest capacity wind farms with 634 wind turbines and a total installed capacity of 781.5 megawatts. At the time of its completion in 2009, it was the largest wind farm in the world, surpassing the nearby 735.5 megawatt Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center. In 2012, it was overtaken by California's 1,020 megawatt Alta Wind Energy Center.

The project cost more than $1 billion and provides enough power for more than 250,000 average Texan homes. It is located about 200 miles (320 kilometers) west of Fort Worth, spanning parts of four Texas counties and covering nearly 100,000 acres, several times the size of Manhattan.

So...okay, that was something.

There isn't a lot to say about Lubbock. Our only reason for being here is that it is on the way to our next destination of Caprock Canyons State Park. Also, the sites are paved. Mike has to repair our left front landing gear, and he didn't want to be crawling on hands and knees on a gravel site. From my AAA tour book, I've learned the Lubbock is the birthplace of Buddy Holly 

Given that I grew up listening to music with the dinosaurs (on transister radios, no less), you might be surprised to learn that Buddy Holly was ahead of my time. His career was short because he was tragically killed in a plane crash at the height of his fame when he was just 22 years of age. Singer Don McLean referred to this as "The Day the Music Died." There's a statue of Buddy Holly in Lubbock.

(Image Credit: Kent Kanouse)

Also located in Lubbock is the National Ranching Heritage Center, which is a museum and outdoor park with 49 historic structures dating back to the 1700's. In addition to the 19-acre park, the NRHC has 42 life-size bronze steer sculptures and a 44,000-square-foot museum with seven galleries featuring art exhibits, photography, and artifacts that capture historical and contemporary Western life.

Also...Joyland Amusement Park, which happens to be closed for the season. Guess we'll miss that. (Begin wailing and moaning now...actually not. I hate amusement parks.)

Also...Silent Wings Museum. Mike might actually like this. The Silent Wings Museum preserves and promotes the history of the World War II military glider program.

There's more, but those are just a few of the things that caught my eye.

When we arrived here, there was a bit of a snafu because an RV was sitting in our space. It was a man who was supposed to have checked out at noon. We waited around until around 5:30 when he sheepishly showed up and moved his RV. Geez. No harm done, but we couldn't really set up until we were in the space we were supposed to be in. We had our dinner and then enjoyed a beautiful sunset.

Day is done.

As I mentioned, it was in the 70's when we arrived yesterday and folks were running the AC's in their rigs. This morning, the temperature is 20 degrees, headed for a high of 43 degrees at 4:00 p.m. Yeesh. It's pretty darned cold. We knew it would be cooling off, but we weren't expecting freezing temperatures through the afternoon. Fortunately Mike will be wearing some heavy coveralls while he does his work outside. I'll keep the home fires burning inside (meaning, hot coffee), and I'll set up my sewing machine and do some sewing. We're expecting this to be a two-day job. If he finishes soon enough, we'll get out and see some of Lubbock's offerings.