Texas - Day 8 - Big Spring, Midland, Odessa, Monahans Sandhills

Monahans Sandhills State Park, Monahans
Tuesday, 10 November 2020

Today was about hitting some of these towns/cities I've heard about all my life but don't think I've ever been to.  In planning this route, I checked websites like Trip Advisor for each of them, to see if there was anything I particularly wanted to see.  The closest thing I found was George W. Bush's Boyhood Home in Midland, and although I've come to value him much more as a past president than I did when he was in office - he's a truly decent and honorable man, after all - I would have wanted to see the house because of his parents, not because of him.  So I decided to skip it.  Instead, I got directions to the county courthouse buildings in all of them (they're all county seats).

today's route

I headed almost due south from Lubbock to Big Spring, passing a farm of palm trees.  The land was completely flat and I could see cropfields and a wind farm that stretched to the horizon.

In the vicinity of Tahoka, I was seeing hills and cows.  Then it was back to mostly flat cropland: cotton and corn.

That green crop I've been seeing isn't all winter wheat.  I got close enough to see that it may be some kind of vegetable, but it's definitely not a grass which, after all, wheat basically is.  I don't know, do soybeans grow in the winter in Texas?

At Lamesa, I saw so much cotton on the ground, left over from the harvest, that it looked like snow.  It seems odd to me - yes, I know cotton is light, but so is wheat, and I haven't been seeing that blanketing the ground.  It looks like whatever method/machinery they're using to harvest cotton these days isn't as efficient as it should be.  They're leaving a lot of product on the ground.

What surprised me about those rectangular cotton bales I saw in Floydada the other day was that they weren't round, which is the only kind of cotton bale I'd seen before.  But along US 87, which is what I was on all morning, I saw plenty of both out in the fields.   https://certipik.com/2016/cotton-square-or-round-bales  This article seems a little condescending to me, but it's got useful information about the choice between the 2 types of bale.

I started seeing signs advertising water for sale.  

I also started seeing oil wells - lots of them.  In the space of about ⅛ mile, I saw a half dozen oil wells, lined up along the road and all pumping away.  I saw 2 wells about 6' apart pumping in unison.  That must be a serious oil field.

Big Spring

Big Spring's population is 25,233, and it's the location for the Big Spring State Hospital, which provides psychiatric services to West Texas residents.  The town is down in a valley, surrounded by hills.  

I saw a sign directing me to a sandhill crane area, which I think is a sanctuary for Sandhill Cranes.  Well, there's plenty of dry ground around here.

Howard County Courthouse

As I turned a corner near the courthouse, I saw an old building that might have been vacant.  But it's clear from the elaborate façade that it was once an important building.  I wish there were enough money available somewhere to bring some of these neglected places back to life.

We really needed a break and I grabbed the first parking place I could find downtown which, luckily, was right by a park.  And on the other side of the park, I saw another building that was likely not in use.  But it wasn't until I saw the name carved over the doorway that I realized its previous importance.

This was my first sight of the building.

detail of doorway

detail of roofline

The Petroleum Building.  Built in 1929, which helps explain the architectural details.  I could tell by all the support services I saw in town (not to mention all those oil wells I passed) that oil is still a major part of the economy of this area.  But it's a shame one of the oil companies couldn't spring for the price of refurbishing this building.

Midland

It's about 35 miles down the road from Big Spring and much larger, but in many ways they feel like sister cities.  Coming into town I passed a major plant named Imperative Chemical Partners ("it's imperative to choose a trusted partner" ... "when it comes to chemicals").

Midland County Courthouse

Midland got its name from being halfway between Fort Worth and El Paso on the Texas & Pacific Railway.  (Our history surrounds us if we bother to look.)

Midland, pop. 111,147, has a bunch of tall fancy office buildings and the Bush Boyhood Home.  I saw a private jet landing at the Midland Airport, which told me there's still a lot of money in this town.

Just outside town I saw a highway sign saying "La Entrada al Pacifico."  I can translate that, but it did me no good so I looked it up.  It's the common name given to "Trade Corridor 56" which was designated by the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act.  And if you knew there was such a thing, you're more on top of things than I am.  It is apparently an international agreement for a route from Texas, via Midland-Odessa, to the Pacific port of Topolobampo (great name) in Sinaloa, Mexico.  It sounds like the original intent was to focus on trucks, but Mexico has some serious geographic road blocks - e.g. Grand Canyon sized canyons - along the route, so they're thinking of expanding rail service as part of the deal.  Who knew?

Odessa

Odessa, pop. 49,940, is just 20 miles down the road from Midland.  My impression is that it's a little brother to Midland, but still, it's the county seat of Ector County.

Ector County Courthouse

Interesting how different the architecture of these 3 courthouses is.  None of these photos is mine, by the way.  I saw them all but was having trouble enough navigating the city streets to stop for photos.

Odessa is also the site of a meteor crater that's been designated a National Natural Landmark.  There are actually several craters in the same area, and the largest is 550' in diameter.  Scientists estimate they date back to 63,500 years ago.

Odessa has several large murals, and I'm sorry that none of them is online because they're attractive and characteristic of the area - e.g. one called "Whistle Stop Town" and another of oil wells.

Speaking of oil wells, I saw a forest of them, with most of them pumping away.  And I saw a sign saying something about the Permian Basin.  Okay, I've heard of the Permian Basin all my life but never been really clear on what exactly it is, so I looked it up.  It's an enormous sedimentary basin, which also contains a large productive oil and natural gas field.  It begins south of Lubbock and runs almost all the way to the Rio Grande and west into southeastern New Mexico.  It's about 250 miles wide and 300 miles long so, yeah, enormous.

I noticed that being in a place where they're drilling oil wells about every 3 feet doesn't get residents lower gas prices.  They were higher here than back on the way from Lubbock.

Back on the road

The land west of Odessa is fairly flat scrubland, and the speed limit jumped up to 80 mph.  Which of course I didn't get to.  It's just too hard to hold the RV on the road at high speeds, especially with crosswinds.

Monahans Sandhills State Park

As I drove into the park, a Roadrunner crossed the road.  Do they ever run anywhere besides on roads or is that just where they're easiest to see?

The road leading to the park office was narrow with sand dunes like these all along the way.

I asked at the office what on earth all this sand was doing here so far from an ocean.  They explained "in layman's terms" (a phrase she repeated so often it got insulting) that a zillion years ago (sort of) the mountains in northern New Mexico began eroding from the wind that was blowing across them.  The erosion took the form of fine dust that blew hundreds of miles away and got caught in the Permian Basin.  And here we are.  And after all, she reminded me, this area was one part of the great inland sea, back in prehistoric times, so sand made sense then.

Windmills and Railroads

windmill example

railroad example (see explanation at right) -
this was being used as the park office

historical marker re:
park office building

closeup from above -
the park sensibly minimizes
damage to the dunes by 
providing these discs for use
in sliding down the dunes

the trails of people climbing, then
sliding down the dunes

Somebody was parked in my camping spot when I got there, so while I was waiting to claim it I drove back to a nature trail I'd seen to walk the dogs.  Along the trail were informational signs, like the following.

There were also small signs identifying some of the plants indigenous to the area.

Havard Oak

detail from left

detail from right

Honey Mesquite

Plains Yucca

detail from left

Sand Sagebrush

detail from left

These next 2 informed about plants that had shriveled into nothing recognizable - clearly they need to be seen at some other time of the year.  But I thought the signs were interesting.

And lastly, evidence of wildlife.

This is a birdbath/watering hole the park set up,
and it was heavily populated with little birds
when we walked up and scared them. 
If there were audio for this, you'd be deafened
by them criticizing us for interrupting them.
As dry as it was there, all kinds of animals
would be wanting that water.

I don't know what kind of bird made these
tracks, but there was clearly a convention
here - not to mention the dog tracks.

This is a small campground, with almost all the sites backed up to the sand dunes.  Texas does a pretty good job of allowing a lot of space between campsites in most of its campgrounds, aided in recent times by their policy of not renting out all the sites to comply with the governor's social distancing mandates.  Fine by me.  And it was one of the darkest campgrounds I've been in, which allowed the stars to be more visible (what I could see over the heaping sand dunes).