Chikasha to Van Horn Texas

Here we are in Van Horn Texas.  We left at about 8:30, with frozen ice pellets on the car and ended up driving through freezing rain off and on from Oklahoma City to Interstate 20.  Cars from further East that joined us on Interstate 20 were covered with ice, showing quite pretty patterns in some cases, but reminders that the road conditions could change quickly.  As we joined Interstate 10 in early afternoon, things warmed up to as high as 10C before returning to near freezing as we neared the mountains.

We stopped at 4:30 in Van Horn since it was looking like motel accommodations might be scarce later on and we really didn't want to drive in the dark [the next big place  being about two hours away].  Van Horn looked promising since there were gas stations, restaurants [MacDonalds, Subway] and two motels listed on the highway signs.  We stopped at the first motel, The Sands which had a restaurant, wireless internet,  and looked locally owned.  It's barely clean, very shop-worn and the internet is inconsistent when its working, and stubborn when its not.  I'm not sure I'll be able to add images to this text for example...

After unloading [frost expected yet again!] we drove into town and were blown away by the many motels, well over  dozen to chose from!  We chose one of the restaurants in town and had loud 'country and western' with reasonable food!  We asked the waitress what there was in Van Horn to attract enough people here to justify so many motels: "Nothing" was her reply.  It seems that people realize that there will be a two hour drive to the next place with choices if you're headed West, and take advantage of Van Horn as the first place advertising accommodations after the last 200 or so miles when driving East.  Location, location!  But I wouldn't invest here on a bet!

The very cold weather is un-seasonal for the area and I hope we've seen the last of it.  While we've had many miles of freezing rain today, the road was never slippery and we didn't accumulate much ice.  It should get warmer as we keep heading west, at least, that's the plan...

And now for the pictures:

One doesn't have visions of endless windmill farms when thinking of Texas, but they do have them!  We drove for over an hour [about 70 miles] and there were windmills on the crest of a mountain range on our left, then some appeared on our right.  The ones in the picture were quite close to the interstate and the clouds tell the story of the freezing rain that we had driven through.  The white items in the foreground of the image are little cotton balls that were missed during harvest; we saw cotton fields along the highway most of today.

Texas has roadside picnic areas, no restrooms, just picnic shelters like this one, a few garbage cans and a large parking lot.  Quite convenient for making pictures...

These last two images were made at sunset, just on the western edge of Van Horn Tx and give you a good idea of the mountains nearby.  Those white spots in the foreground of second image [double click on image] are errant golf balls from the nearby course...  Of course, the keeners will have noticed the Texas flag in the first picture, right?