Part Two

We originally planned for there to be four 3-week parts to this road trip. After some tweaking, the third and fourth parts got extended a bit. But Parts One and Two are still almost exactly three weeks each. Today was the beginning of Part Two of the trip, through the American Southwest from Austin to San Francisco.

We headed out from Austin to Lubbock, because you can't make it to Santa Fe all in one day. Had to stop somewhere. West Texas is pretty much prairie, making it somewhat of a long, featureless drive.

In addition to Top Chef restaurants, we are also visiting some of our favorite Texas-based establishments. In Austin, we had a Schlotzsky's original sandwich. Today in Lampasas, we stopped at a Whataburger for lunch. If you don't know know what Whataburger is, we can't explain it here. It's an icon in Texas. The burgers aren't as good as they used to be, but they are still much better than the more familiar national burger chains. We enjoyed them again today.

Then about halfway through the drive to Lubbock you get to the Sweetwater wind farm. It goes on as far as the eye can see. Because it's so flat there is even a bit of earth curvature effect: If you look to the horizon you can see just the tops of windmills that are miles and miles away. It's actually just the 7th biggest one in the state.

This video still really doesn't do the totality of the windfarm justice. I don't think any photo could.

There are even more smaller windfarms as you get closer to Lubbock, some with oilfield pumpjacks operating right alongside. We've driven through wind farms in California and elsewhere. This sheer number of windmills we saw today dwarfs any we've ever seen. And just a small political editorial comment that most can agree with: nearly every ounce of steel in them and the turbines were made in China. A huge lost opportunity for creating a significant number of good-paying, union American jobs.

Getting closer to Lubbock the Llano Estacado comes into view. Once you get on top of it, there are almost no trees. Just miles and miles of cotton fields. As we neared our objective, we were welcomed by a small dust storm. Hopefully that's the last of those we will see!

You can see the brownish dust in the air on the left and center just above the horizon.