Installment #8 - Retirement Trip

3-15-08

Thanks again to all of you for the emails and phone calls we are receiving.
Additional information for you - a web site about the Loretto chapel we talked about in Installment #7. http://www.answers.com/topic/loretto-chapel
Our next big stop was Lubbock (now out of New Mexico and into Texas). We stopped at the American Windmill museum – amazing that the beginning of this collection came from Nebraska. http://www.windmill.com/
On our highway drive this afternoon, we say 4 dead skunks on side of the road within 3 miles, loads of cattle feeding ranches, hundreds of oil wells (Tony calls them "nodding donkeys"), one drilling derrick, lots of cotton fields, one bale of cotton in one field, a lot of the new wind generators, a still in business drive-in movie, a cotton warehouse, and many, many trains. Finally saw some long horn cattle outside of Baird.

Unusual signs seen – "La Quinta – Spanish for ‘high speed internet’"; "If you must curse, use your own name. ~God"; "far wood, fer sale";
Stopped in Cisco TX to see first hotel purchased by Conrad Hilton in 1919 – story is that it was the only way he could get a place to sleep. He then rented rooms for eight-hour shifts, tripling the normal income, to oil field workers. http://www.ciscotx.com/ciscopd/conradhilton.html

On to Weatherford TX and a drive by of home where Mary Martin was born and Larry Hagman (JR of Dallas, Mary Martin’s son) was raised.
Next to Forth Worth TX to the stockyards and Billy Bob’s (world’s largest honky tonk). Saw cattle drive down main street of the stockyards.
Motorhome now at friends south of Dallas. We’re in the car heading even further south of Waco to visit a cousin of Sharon’s.