Travelogue -- Dr Bob's US50 Motorcycle Ride
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22 May 2012, 11:30 PM CT, Sweetwater, TX

I'm in Texas. And will be for about 750 miles. I rode 465 miles today. Just a little over 100 miles were on Interstate. Most of the rest was on US-84 which runs between Georgia and Colorado.

I don't have many pictures today, it was a travel day. Let me show you the first one, then do some explanation.

I paid particular attention to this sign because I have read about the Llano Estacado. Hanna gave me a book a few months ago titled "Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History", a biography by S.C. Gwynne, published by Simon & Schuster. You can read the book. Or you can watch the John Wayne movie "The Searchers". Quanah Parker was the greatest Commanch chief, and the last during the American Indian wars. He was the son of a Commanche chief and a kidnapped pioneer woman. Anyway, Quanah spent a lot of time on the Llano Estacado. Here's what the land looks like behind the sign.

Here's another picture of the land two hours down the road.

And a picture that is common in Texas.

Here's the windmill picture for today. Here again I need an explanation. I went through an area where there were countless windmills. So I looked it up. It was just north and west of Sweetwater, where I am staying tonight. Quoting from Wikipedia:

Sweetwater Wind Farm is one of the largest wind farms in Texas. Construction of the 585 MW wind farm has proceeded in five stages, and some generating capacity is still being built.

Sweetwater stage 4 employs 135 Mitsubishi 1.0 megawatt wind turbines and 46 Siemens Wind Power 2.3 megawatt turbines. Its output is being sold to San Antonio’s CPS Energy under a 20-year purchase agreement.

Construction of Sweetwater stage 5 began in February 2007, with completion expected by December 2007. Using 35 Siemens turbines, Sweetwater 5 will have a capacity of 80 MW.

Adding those numbers would be 216. Sure seemed like more than that to me. It went on for miles. Maybe I saw more than one farm. The Sweetwater Wind Farm is in Nolan County. I note that there are eight wind farms that are completely or partially in Nolan County with 2,365 windmills. So, maybe I did see more than one farm.

Come back tomorrow and I will show you some scenes in Austin.

Have you checked out my map which I update every evening?

It's a good thing I do this every night. I spend a couple of hours every night doing the pictures in Photoshop and the text. If I left it all to the end it simply would not get done. I'm glad I do it daily. I hope you all enjoy it.

And a completely different picture. You remember my Harley air conditioner? My brother Larry sent me this picture and here's what he said, "Here is an example of a cooler that is not an air conditioner. This is on a Studebaker. I remember seeing these when we went West in the early 1950's."

Thanks Larry.