Hord's Lake, Coleman, Texas; April 27 to May 5, 2015

 

Depart Midway Park10 AM; 7435.8 tripometer miles

 I always enjoy the unexpected in our travels - this is a beautiful courthouse in Gatesville, Texas. Somany of these towns have had such difficult economic times lately that it isn't uncommon to see a building like this in a town that is barely alive.

 The road here reminds me of the Christmas ribbon candy.

 We travel along for 30 or more minutes and then come across a ranch like this - almost like a small community.

 The wind farms in this area are huge, with hundreds and hundreds of windmills. We traveled for more than 20 minutes through one such area.

We were here two years ago and enjoyed the quiet, nearly empty park due to the low water level in the lake due to the drought. This year, although the lake was up a bit, it wasn't enough to entice many boaters out over the weekend, so it was, for the most part, an enjoyable stay. We found our good Chuck Wagon tamales at the Shoppin' Baskit grocery – we now have a couple of meals of tamales in the freezer.

The wild flowers were blooming throughout the campground and along the roadside and overall the 

weather was beautiful during our stay. 

 I haven't been able to identify this lovely, delicate flower.

 Hill country, anyone?

Acres and acres of mesquite on our way to visit Frontier: Texas! in Abilene.

 The previous time we were here, we had to cut our day-trip to Abilene short due to a big storm moving in and didn't get to go through the Frontier! Texas museum, so took a drive to Abilene. The Frontier! Texas stop was worth the trip. The museum is not particularly large, but the displays, which include cleverly devised, informative holograms. There were two different short theater productions which added to the reality of the information and, although the two of us managed to arrive with a group of school children, the docent and the chaperone kept the kids in line – no screaming or running around, thank you very much! After the museum, we had a delicious lunch at Farolito's, which was as good as it was two years ago, picked up some groceries, and headed back to camp.

 Some of you Gunsmoke fans may recognize (in spite of my bad photograph) Buck Taylor, who played Newly O'Brien during the last eight seasons. Buck narrated much of the information in the informative video about the museum.

 Our first bison of this trip... As we continued through Frontier: Texas! we saw many beautiful examples of Native American artifacts.

 The museum also used wonderful holograms to bring personalized information to visitors - the holograms had so much more impact than signs and were so realistic one was tempted to reach out and try to touch the narrator.

During the mid-1800's the over-abundance of buffalo was one obstacle to settlers establishing permanent homes in Texas, but once the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 and it was possible to ship hides to eastern markets, the slaughter of buffalo in the 1870's and 1880's began.  Millions of buffalo were killed and their bones covered the prairie. It was said that you could walk the 15 miles from Abilene to Buffalo Gap on buffalo bones without touching the ground. In the 1880's, the drought and recession hit the settlers hard and to keep from losing their businesses and farms, many hauled tons and tons of bones from the prairies and hauled them in wagons to railroad boneyards.

 Between 1858 and 1861, stagecoach travel was common. The trip from Missouri to California took 25 days - one-third of that time was spent crossing Texas! Oh, my aching back!

 This is a shield made from hide and "decorated" with three scalps. The story about this was included but it was all pretty grim.

 This is a 0.32 caliber Chicago Protector "The Protector" Palm gun from 1893.

On the way back to camp, we stopped by Buffalo Gap Homestead Village, a group of buildings brought in to depict life in the mid-1800's. Sadly, it was too late to do a tour, but we'll definitely return. Neither of us remember hearing about Buffalo Gap before our trip to Abilene, but the next day we were watching ME TV and on “The Lone Ranger” what should be mentioned but Buffalo Gap. (I know – the Lone Ranger? Really???)

On our way back to camp from Buffalo Gap we were stopped by roadwork - they were putting oil down on the dirt road, presumably to lessen the dust? Seems as though it might leak down to the aquifer, doesn't it? 

The photos below are of the park area. It's a huge place with lots of campground loops and most of the time it's nearly empty. Our kind of place.

We heard from one of the locals that a good place to get ribs was Big O's. We enjoy BBQ and ribs, but because you can almost always find a place that serves decent BBQ, we usually opt for a different cuisine. This time, we decided to try Big O's and are we ever glad we did. The ribs were hands-down the best either of us have ever had and on the advice of the local, ordered his butter fries. We had never tried butter fries, but oh, my goodness! Delicate but delicious is the only thing I can say. All-in-all, we had a lot of really great food and a great time for a more than fair price. Big O is the cook and smokes all the meat he serves. His stature proves out his nickname, he's plain-spoken man and a hoot to talk to. We may stay at Coleman again just to go to Big O's.

Now we're off to a couple of new parks in New Mexico – can't wait!

Depart Coleman, TX for an overnight in Lubbock, TX 10 AM; 7435.8 tripometer miles.