…of disrupted sleep.
The weight of calories from yesterday, a not insubstantial inflow of breakfast, lunch and dinner with an inverted layer of lager aloft proved to be an unfortunate set up. Severe turbulence in the gut had me awake despite an early night, sat up swinging Gaviscon in an attempt to suppress convection. Nodded off then woken by booming thunder, nodded off again followed by similar interruptions for more thunder including one right on top of us, lashing rain then hail smacking against the window. The NWS phone alert went off, so loud it even woke Rory. Storms eh? Plain sleeping from now on in? Not thanks to whoever previously set the radio alarm clock at max volume and to some Mexican music radio station. I get up, you have to know when to admit defeat. Rory puts on the Spanish Grand Prix so it’s shower time.
It’s a 9:00 start time and we’re ready. SPC has a marginal risk in south Texas but do we really want to go that far south? Depends on what is happening in the coming days which doesn’t appear to be a great deal. May apparently had 11 states with no severe weather and there were no EF3+ tornadoes. May is (or was) peak season. Only analysis in coming years will figure out whether this is a trend or just natural variation.
This morning’s breakfast is at The Grill. I have the American Breakfast with blueberry sausages, spicy sausages contain blueberries; I grudgingly have to admit it works. Rory had the Huevos Rancheros which he rated highly. It was only when we were leaving that I noticed Rory had a great splodge of black slime on the back of his leg. No idea what it was, took some cleaning off. We then visited HEB (a smaller, better class Walmart?) to pick up picnic provisions and are on the road to the Texas Panhandle on Highway 208 with no real expectations of severe weather. The south option is a “long way to come back” and local forecasters were not very positive about its options. I think some museums will be on the agenda, we’ll be in this area (probably for a while), or Colorado/NewMexico until a more favourable pattern emerges later next week. No problem, we have Day 1 in the bag.
We pass through Snyder and north west on US84 towards Lubbock and as we pass Post a crop duster is out spraying, flying almost at ground level, soaring at the end of its run to turn round and and then dive back down acrobatically for the next pass, then amazingly crosses the road feet above the traffic, turns again and passes over us. Great skills.
Rory looks up and there’s a red polygon over Amarillo. A tornado warned storm has popped up but that’s a way off north, later confirmed to have produced a land spout tornado.
As we approach Lubbock we stop off at Ransom Canyon home to sculptor Robert Bruno’s steel house and the Lawson Rock House overlooking a lake then it’s on to Maxey Park for a picnic with a Prairie Dog digging in the dirt. On the way we pass a large cow facility and I open the window so Rory can video it, instantly getting the bird as the air stinks. I could actually taste it which can’t be good…before arriving at the Museum of Texas Tech University where Rory tries out the tornado simulator which blows his hair all over. The museum hosts some cool stuff including dinosaur skeletons, and best of all has a very clean rest room…and it’s all free.
A Douglas C-47 Skytrain from WW2 flies overhead and soon we pass the Silent Wings Museum which I went to on a previous trip as we head north on I27 towards Plainview stopping a couple of times to take photos of a storm ahead, one from an overpass with the Agri Producers Grain Corp in the foreground. We turn off east past Plainview down the 3183 country road and take some snaps of the storm, dust caught in the cold outflow with a tractor in the foreground. One thing to note is how wet and green the Panhandle is this year, with plenty of flooding evident. The storm is smallish at 39,000 feet and is moving across the ground at 8 knots. Still cool, any day with a storm is a good day.
We continue north on I27 towards Amarillo where we have a date at the Saltgrass steak house. A storm to the north west of Amarillo is severe warned, but it fizzles out. Rory and I have the cheeseburgers and very good they are too.
Total miles: 379
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