I wonder if our car made it onto Google

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Geo: 32.7485, -97.3292

Today we are headed east, for the first time on this road trip. We have officially made the turn-around after making it all the way to the west side of Texas. The clock said 6:15 AM when we got up this morning, but since we decided to stay on Texas time for this brief period (less than 24 hours), it was really 7:15 AM for us. We got onto the road at 8:45 and 48 degrees and set out for Ft. Worth, TX.

Hobbs is right on the state line, so it didn't take long for us to be back in Texas and officially back in Central Time. We headed southeast toward I-20, and passed through a town called Lamesa, TX, a tired old town with abandoned homes and businesses. They even had two drive-ins. One was a theater and the other a restaurant, in the style of something you would see on Happy Days, both rusting and rotting away.

We found I-20 at Big Spring, where we saw the last oil refinery and the last power plant for this day. As we started down the highway, it was clear that we were moving out of the desert and into the prairies. The bare rocky dirt, barely giving life to cactus and sage bushes, turned into more fertile soil with yellow grass growing between the plants. And an hour later we were in farm country. Clearly, the farmers were using large-scale sprinkler systems to feed the plants, but the fields were full of vegetation, though it was difficult to identify exactly what they were growing. The one thing we are sure of is that many of the farms were growing cotton. This surprised me, since I always think of the south for cotton...Georgia, South Carolina, etc. The difference between these cotton fields and those we are more familiar with is very striking...oil wells. Dispersed throughout many of the fields were these hammers, appearing to pound the ground in a rhythmic cadence, but pulling the oil up, from the deep wells below, into nearby holding tanks. And we saw drilling rigs, where new wells were about to be born. These farmers are getting rich, and it isn't from cotton. My research tells me that the oil and gas companies buy land leases from the owners, giving them annual rental fees plus about 1/8th of the value of the oil or gas that they recover. And if the wells go quiet waiting for repair, they get an additional fee to make up for the loss in royalties. Some of these farms had a lot of pumps.

We saw a lot of farms. Most appeared to be large-scale operations...big business...as opposed to small family farms. We could drive for miles and never see a house. And unlike yesterday, we didn't see another power plant the rest of the way to Ft. Worth. We did, however, see thousands and thousands of wind turbines. Some were near the roadside, some on flat-top hills and others way off in the distance, faintly visible through a dim haze.

Midday we arrived in Abilene. I wanted to see this town that was immortalized in song...Abilene, Abilene, Prettiest town I've ever seen, Folks down there don't treat you mean in Abilene, my Abilene. And after driving around for a while, I could see that, at one time, it was probably a very pretty town. But the architecture gave it away as something out of the 50's and 60's, although it has been well maintained, unlike Lamesa. They have the prettiest churches...a Presbyterian, a Methodist and a Baptist, all close together in town, just a block from the main thoroughfare. Abilene has it's own charm worthy, in my opinion, of being remembered in song.

Riding down the highway we were passed by a very interesting vehicle. Wish I had a photo. It was a small car with a ball sitting high above the roof and the side of the car said it was Google Earth. The ball...a set of cameras pointed in all directions photographing the roads and roadsides just as you see them online. The car was plated in California and we saw it just outside of Ft. Worth.

As we entered Ft. Worth a fighter jet passed us overhead, not more than 500 feet up. It was on final to the Air Force base just outside of the city. And the city...quite impressive. Certainly bigger than I had expected, with many modern high-rises and of course the typical tangle of raised roads, like a web hanging in mid air. Where do all of those roads go to?

We settled in for the night around 4:30 PM. Tomorrow, Jackson, Mississippi.

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[Art Ritter]

Cool churches!