Dallas and return Home

Dallas was beautiful yesterday. Nothing like the weather we had coming over.

The King Tut exhibit was really good but they did not have any of the really large pieces like the masks they had 20 or so years ago. They did have some very interesting x-rays of the mummy,, additionally there was a striking rendering of Tut’s skull and dentition made of bronze from a CT scan done several years ago and they let you touch it and examine it . This was great.

We rode over to my friend Richard Moore’s house and dropped off the bike. His wife Ladonna made a fantastic meal for us and then he dropped us at the airport, thanks so so much.

This segment overall was tough but we managed to do everything that we wanted to. Jane had fun and she is still talking to me

I will return to Dallas solo to continue the tour Thursday April 2, in the afternoon….Stay tuned.  

The final leg of this section

March 28 10:50 p.m.

The ride today was from Odessa to Dallas, with a stop in Midland.

What a fantastic Museum, the Permian Basin oil museum should not be missed. The history, the development and the current technology were shown, in addition to Jim Hall’s Chapparal race cars. There is also an art exhibition which was quite outstanding with the major subject being life around the oil patch. I really liked all of it.

The weather today was really quite OK. Temps were 50-60 with a strong but consistent wind at about 90 degrees to direction of travel until the last 100 mi or so in the Texas hill country, when it was really great but then the temps went lower…..not complaining. It was a great day, and we look forward to seeing the major interest stuff around Dallas tomorrow before returning home.

Ice Snow Wind and Cave

March 27, 10:15 p.m.

This was a very remarkable day for many different reasons compared with yesterday. Last night it snowed over this whole area, only a little but the temps were very low. The bike had ice on it this morning. The ride over the mountain going east was very difficult as there was snow and ice on the road, with light snow falling. We really got cold, I had the heated grips on full and it had almost no effect. When we got to Artesia we stopped just to warm up.

The ride on down to the Carlsbad Caverns was better but there was still lots of wind and the temps were now in the 35 range which was much better than earlier. The caverns were an amazing natural creation, like maybe Yosemite valley or Rainbow bridge. The very large rooms and labrynths go for miles. They only allow the public into about half of the explored areas. I really enjoyed seeing this National Park.

The ride from Carlsbad to Odessa was about 200 mi and windy. The landscape in west Texas is quite flat and the roads are quite straight. I have never seen so much oil equipment in my life. Wells and oil rigs dot the land for hundreds of square miles.

This day will be remembered mostly for the weather but also because we made it safely.

 

Bob's first big day of riding

What a day !!!  Left home at about 5:20 a.m. and initially the riding and weather were great. I found out after the fact that the spot GPS had not been working and so I’ll try to do better with getting it up and running before I leave tomorrow. Anyway we had some extremely strong wind buffeting from about 50 miles east of Tucson all the way to here in Alamogordo. I am happy we didn’t have too much cold or any rain, outstanding!

When we crossed the Rio Grande at Las Cruces I really started to feel like we were out of the So Cal area. The wind and dust made seeing everything somewhat more difficult. Even with the wind, the White Sands are a very unusual sight. We rode 815 miles today and I am tired.

Carlsbad caverns are on the schedule for tomorrow. Hopefully the spot GPS will work and y’all can follow our progress.   

 

Bob's Adventure

Bob begins his wild multi-month trip accross the United States