Alaska Roadtrip Days 4 – 6

Thursday, April 26, DAY 4

We left Louisiana early heading for Waco, Texas, hoping to visit Magnolia Farms, of Chip and Joanna Gaines fame. Our drive through Texas was spectacular, thanks to Ladybird Johnson and her wildflower program. The highways are still filled with these pink flowers, and yellow, coral, red and blue. The rolling landscape in southern Texas is our favorite so far.

We finally arrived at Magnolia Farms. Big mistake! The place was over-run with busloads of tourists and end-of-school trips. So, we gave it a pass and found a campsite nearby in a state park on Waco Lake, our prettiest spot to date. State parks and Federal parks are proving to be the cleanest, most picturesque of all the campgrounds.

Friday, the 27th, Day 5: We slept well, got up early, made and drank coffee, broke camp, and drove north through a lot of Texas into Oklahoma, the landscape becoming drier and flatter as we went on.   The roadside wildflowers disappeared in Oklahoma, and huge tracts of farm land replaced them… wheat, cotton, cattle, goats, llamas, bison.

We camped in northern Oklahoma in Great Plains State Park. A lake was surrounded by rocky hills of rust colored stones, looking much more like “the West.” The above photo was sunrise this morning.

Saturday, the 28th, Day 6: An educational day. We saw more and more windmills covering the plains, providing electricity and looking sort of spooky… like huge white giants waving their arms. We saw two turkeys that we at first thought were road runners, but then we saw a REAL roadrunner. Pretty!

We saw thousands of cattle — some on pastureland, some jammed in feed lots being fattened for the slaughter. Pee-yew! No stink can compare. Many, may feed lots over hundreds of miles as we traveled west… dozens of grain elevators holding the feed for the thousands of cattle. We were told that one of the houses slaughtered 500 cattle/ hour!!! That’s a quarter of a million pounds of beef in one hour… a lot of Big Mac’s!

We drove through the historic district of Dodge City and saw the Long Branch Saloon. Kitty, Chester, Festus, and Mr. Dillon could not be found. However, we remembered from Gunsmoke episodes that Dodge City was a major cattle drive destination even back then, so it is still a major beef processing town. The rail lines run westward, carrying beef to Denver and beyond.

Late this afternoon Tom had a stroke of genius! He said, “Why don’t we sleep in a hotel tonight. We could get a really good shower, do laundry, clean up the car a bit, eat out.” What a jewel he is. I think we’ll do this again after 5-6 days camping. Great idea.

So, here I sit in a Comfort Inn, in Garden City, Kansas just west of Dodge City. I also have wi-fi to catch up here.