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2007 Texas to Colorado Model T Tour
June 20th thru July 4th, 2007
joining the "Search
for the Mohigans Tour”
and the Model T
Club of Northern Colorado.
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Wednesday, July 4th 2007
Turkey, TX to Gatesville, TX - 330
mi.
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Lisa, the owner of Hotel
Turkey, fixed us a big breakfast this morning including sweet
potato pancakes. Yum! After some minor repairs and
maintenance, we got on our way for what turned out to be a very
long day. The Texas Panhandle and much of the
northwestern part of the state is agricultural. Miles and
miles of plowed and planted cotton fields stretched on either
side of the road. We saw a lot of cattle and lots more
pumpjacks (pumping equipment for established wells). Very
few houses and really depressing little towns. It is the
4th of July so many businesses would be closed but, in some of
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the towns, the buildings stood abandoned
and deterioriating.
As we came further east, the
terrain became more hilly. This area is the northern end
of the Texas Hill Country. Not mountains exactly, but
bluffs and ravines. And a lot of wind. We were
surprised to see a huge wind farm with well over 50 windmills
and were even more surprised that they weren’t turning.
We weren’t close enough to determine if they were
under construction or just not operational today.
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Most of our driving today was
west to east, cutting south at an angle and trying to stay off
any major roads. The holiday helped in that many people
were off since, with a mid-week holiday, travel was more local
than it might have been otherwise.
Coming into the town of
Albany, everything became more green. Most of the
mid-to-eastern part of the state has been rainsoaked and
flooded during the time we’ve been gone. Areas
which usually are pretty brown were lush and green.
Rivers were full, streams were overflowing their banks,
and we managed to miss the rain that fell all around us.
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We’re on the way home
so we aren’t really doing any sight-seeing right now.
We are still taking country roads but aren’t
necessarily looking for scenic routes. We want to get
home, With the problems with Martin’s car while we
were in Colorado and the breakdown of Austen’s car here
in Texas, we are about a day behind. However, the town
of Albany has a beautiful courthouse and I wanted you to see
what the people of this town have done to preserve their
history. I believe their town logo is “where the frontier
begins”.
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We drove into the town
of Cisco, the home of Cisco Junior College. I don’t
know much about the school but a lot of atheletes that make it
to Texas A&M seem to start there to get their grades up.
In the center of town is this large building, visible for
miles. It is the original Hilton Hotel, Conrad
Hilton’s first hotel. In its day, it was
magnificant. Unfortunately, today, it is abandoned and
vandelized. There appears to be fire damage on the right
side. Perhaps the city has plans for the building but it
is sad that such a notable part of their skyline gives such a
bad impression of the town.
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We drove 330 miles today,
leaving Turkey around 9:00AM and arriving in Gatesville about 9:
00PM. Here Bruce and Barbara take the lead. It was
a good day’s drive with the cars all running well.
Austen and Nicky Bromley are still riding with Martin and
Patty and his car is keeping up without difficulty. He is
having a problem with the alternator, caused by shorting out
some wires before the trip, so he and Ben have changed
batteries on each of the past two days. Martin has been
hand-cranking his car, even though he has a starter on his 1927
in order to save the battery. And to show that he can, I
think.
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We came out of Hico and
caught a Farm-to-Market road that eventually connected with Hwy
36 fifteen miles from Gatesville. This area has huge
ranches, all with custom gates and fencing. One of the
prettiest parts of the drive today. We’re back at a
Best Western tonight and had a good view of the fireworks.
Tomorrow, we should arrive home.
Note: if you have been
reading this regularly, you know we planned to get home today,
in time for the fireworks. Ben will add another button
and we fill you in on our day tomorrow, July 5th as we
finish our “Texas to Colorado” tour..
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