Texas - Day 3 - Rita Blanca National Grassland & Lake Rita Blanca

Corral RV Park, Dalhart
Thursday, 5 November 2020

I saw a shooting star when I was walking the dogs this morning.  I haven't seen one of those in a long time.  I should remember this as a place to come during the time of year when meteor showers are more common.

Speaking of shooting stars, yesterday my windshield got hit by 2 rocks at the top and bottom at almost exactly the same time, and the resulting stars seem pretty big to me.  Not knowing anything about the strength of these modern windshields, I figured I'd better get a professional to take a look at it.  When the campground owner finally showed up late yesterday afternoon to check people in (I think she has a day job), I asked for a windshield recommendation, not having found much online.

Today I called her suggested guy, and he came right on over.  His opinion was that he'd be glad to take my money for a new windshield but I didn't really need to replace it.  He said he could fill the stars if I wanted, and I decided to do that, remembering when we did it on Momma's Honda.  But then he noticed that the star at the top of the windshield was bad enough it couldn't take the pressure he'd need to use to fill it and would start cracking the whole window.  

I summarized his advice as being I could replace the windshield if I wanted to but it would be perfectly safe not to as long as I didn't push directly on that one star.  He said neither cleaning the windshield nor wind pressure while on the road would change that situation.  Since both stars are in the exact middle of the windshield and I can't reach either one without actually climbing on the hood of the RV (which I don't intend to do), I decided to leave things as they are for now and keep an eye on them for further cracks.  I prefer things to be whole and perfect, but my life on the road makes that impossible so I'm learning to accept imperfection.

So off we went.

today's route

On the road
Just out of Dalhart I passed the Hilmar Cheese Co.  I didn't know Texas produced cheese.  Farther along the road I passed the Boer Dairy.  

I drove past green crops growing - winter wheat? - and grazing land.  The land became really flat with not a tree in sight - and I could see to the horizon.  Even a windmill stands out in such a flat landscape.

A tumbleweed blew into the road and hit the RV.

I passed fields of corn and sunflowers.

And then I came to the TX-OK border.  There'd been no sign indicating the turn for FM 296, which passes through the grasslands I wanted to visit and then goes on to the town of Texline.  Either the road or the town or the national grasslands should have merited a highway sign, and there wasn't one for any of those.  I did a U-turn and, southbound, there was indeed such a sign.  And I thought I could trust the TX Highway Dept.

Rita Blanca National Grassland
FM 296 runs for 32 miles across the grasslands.  These are photos I took along the way.  The road was 2 lanes, but they were so narrow that I drove down the center of the road most of the way.  It was no problem seeing oncoming traffic (of which there was little) in time to move over.  Take a look at these photos and you'll see.

I don't know if that fence (above) was strung up by a farmer protecting his private land or by the park service protecting the grasslands.  I passed individually-owned farms all along the way, which bothered me because how can you say you're protecting grasslands if you're letting people come plow them up?  You see, I was still trying to figure out what the point of the grasslands is and why we're protecting them.  

You can see on the map above that the Rita Blanca National Grassland covers a pretty good chunk of the far northern Texas Panhandle and into Oklahoma's panhandle as well.  On the New Mexico side of the border is the Kiowa National Grassland.  I can't see any reason the 2 are split.  I found this explanation of the Rita Blanca part online, and it seems to echo what I found a few days ago at that Lake Marvin/Black Kettle Grassland.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Rita-Blanca-National-Grassland

While I was searching for some reason that Rita Blanca and Kiowa grasslands are managed separately, I found this page about the grasslands in the US and finally! I've got a bit of an understanding of what I've been looking at.  Take a look at this US Forest Service page.   https://www.fs.fed.us/grasslands/aboutus  I remember noticing at that previous grassland that, if it had once been part of the Dust Bowl disaster, its recovery had been spectacular.  This page sounds as if that was exactly the point.  And not only has the land itself recovered, but all the critters that depend on that particular kind of habitat are recovering as well.

To me, I'm still looking at grass, but I guess the point is that it's grass I'm looking at, not mounds of blowing topsoil like we had after we dug up the prairie grasses in the early settlement era.

Texas Parks & Wildlife has a description of the kinds of critters that can be found here at Rita Blanca at different times of the year including, apparently, a prairie dog colony.  I didn't see anything except hawks and meadowlarks, which doesn't mean the others aren't there but that I was afraid to stop much along the road.  Anyway, this same "wildlife trails" page has similar information for the Lake Marvin area and others in the Panhandle.   https://tpwd.texas.gov/wildlife-trails/rita-blanca-loop

Back on the road
There was a rest stop at the other end of FM 296, but I'd only just left Dalhart and didn't want to stop when we passed it.  But on the Texline end, we were all ready for a break.  The trouble was that Texline, pop. 597, has other things to worry about than providing parks.  It looks like a casualty both of the move from small towns to bigger ones and also of the economic fallout from the virus.  We ended up stopping in the parking lot of a motel that was boarded up with a For Sale sign in front.  Dismal, but we were at least able to walk around the parking lot and get some lunch.

From there, we drove back through Dalhart to another small wildlife area I'd heard about on the south edge of town.

Lake Rita Blanca City Park
We passed through a very nice, large city park to this small lake, which is completely undeveloped.  I came because I'd heard it's a magnet for migrating birds.  And, in fact, I saw surprisingly large quantities of birds.

You can see this is an undeveloped area
at a small local lake.  But the birds love it.

birds both flying and swimming

birds in the water

I tried to get these shots enlarged enough so you could see the clouds of birds flying in the photo upper right, and the mass of birds swimming in the photo lower left, but my photo program doesn't allow anything better than these.  If you can enlarge them yourselves, you'll see how many birds were around.  The oddity to me is that this is just a little lake, nowhere near the size of - say - Lake Meredith not far southeast of here.  But I guess it's got something special that appeals to the birds.   If you scroll down the page shown in the link for Rita Blanca Loop above, you'll find information about the critters at this little lake as well.

Driving through Dalhart
Dalhart is situated in 2 counties - Dallam County and Hartley County.  The dividing line runs right through town.  Guess where the town's name came from.

It seems to be a complicated town, with some very fancy houses and some very ordinary houses and an overall dusty cowtown sort of feel.  But the pervasive influence is the smell of cows.  I talked to a store clerk who said she'd moved here from Lampasas, where her family is.  She said she just hadn't been able to warm up to Dalhart because of the smell of the cows.  After staying here a couple of days, I can agree.