Today's target is Fort Stockton, Texas which is seven hours drive away plus we lose an hour heading from Mountain to Central time so we need to get a move on; we're underway at 07:00. The SPC has a yet another marginal risk, this time for eastern New Mexico and western Texas. and tomorrow (Thursday) has similar for south eastern Texas. Things start to get more organised by Friday with a currently marginal risk for the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles which may get upgraded as we get closer. There's a 15% severe risk for Saturday, the first day 4-8 severe risk we've had on this trip (hallelujah) for central Oklahoma and northern Texas and Sunday looks promising too. All this is within chasing distance including our final day (Sunday). There's nothing worse than having to bail on a good day because you have to return to base, hopefully this won't be an issue. What a difference from last year with Alex, looks like this year we won't be further north than Oklahoma.
Despite the nice hotel I didn't sleep particularly well, Rory's latest nocturnal party piece keeping me awake was regularly growling like a bear...
The travelling priority puts paid to Los Pollos Hermanos but one thing I forgot to mention from yesterday was the guy in the booth at the entrance to the Sandia Peak Tramway was Mike Ehrmantraut. He looked like him, he sounded like him and was unsympathetic to the fact that we had failed to prebook online. "You gotta ticket? You should have booked online. Park over there and book". It was him.
We head east through the endless Plains reminiscent of east Africa replete with dozens of Pronghorn Antelope. A pride of lions would not look out of place. We travel south and through Roswell. Green aliens are everywhere, but no time to stop to make first contact. Onwards south and a quick pit stop in Artesia with a monstrous train pulling out of the Navajo Oil Refinery, blasting its horn as it slowly gathers speed.
Continuing south we pass a none stop array of small scale oil operations with the methane flared off, presumably not economic to collect. A lengthy set of roadworks slows us down a bit, the flat arid landscape entertains us with a series of dust devils, some low to the ground and another soars into the sky. We cross the border, still on US285 and into Texas and Central time. Rory's iPhone instantly jumps ahead one hour, mine is not so keen. It's now 13:10 on my phone or 14:10 on Rory's. Either way it's 90 miles or minutes until we reach Fort Stockton with a little bit of convection in the distance to draw us in.
We have a picnic stop in Pecos, Texas which has the West of the Pecos museum; the inference I think, is basically you're a hard core cowboy if you venture west from here. Pecos Bill is celebrated here, a fictional cowboy from the pen of Tex O'Reilly from the early 20th Century. Rory and I finish off the last three feet of the ham and cheese sub he bought in Walmart yesterday and we're on the road again. Well mostly as roadworks and seemingly endless red lights hold us up. Rory can see an anvil in the distance; it's just gone 16:00 and we're sat in traffic and are somewhat keen to continue south down the US285. There are storms!
Just as we get moving there is a CG in front of us and I spot what looks like smoke in the distance - lighting strike? We're now under a very slowly spreading anvil. The "smoke" turns out to be dust...We are still caught up in what appears to be oil workers traffic.
We cut down farm to market road 1776 and stop for some snaps. There is a line of three decent severe warned storms just to our south with some rain shafts and we are rewarded with some nice CG strikes. We join the I10 westbound as the two easterly storms are fading. The main, now dominant storm is near Balmorhea with reported 2.25 inch hail. A mesoscale discussion has been issued by the SPC as storms are strengthening but a watch is unlikely. We stop, take some snaps then about turn towards Fort Stockton. A few CGs light up the sky.
We arrive at Fort Stockton where we stop at Dairy Queen and both have a salad...the mascot of Fort Stockton is Paisano Pete, a roadrunner celebrated by an eleven foot statue at the side of the road. We head east on I10 towards our hotel for tonight which is back in Sonora where we stayed the other night. A quick stop for some Shiner Bock for the room and we're checked in, some batteries to charge, photos to back up and this to finish and we're ready for tomorrow.
Total miles: 610
No comments:
Post a Comment