TEXAS TRIP
10/09/07 to 10/13/07
After resting up for a day after doing an Iron Butt Association run, we took off Tuesday morning for Midland Texas. Our goal was to go to the Commemorative Air Force Museum (formerly the Confederate Air Force). This is a HUGE memorial to aviation in World War 2.
We took off and headed down I-35 to Oklahoma City, and stopped in at the Moore Oklahoma Harley Davidson dealer and looked around. Then we continued on south on I-35 to Ardmore, Oklahoma. As we had packed camping stuff, we stopped at a KOA in Ardmore and got a small camping cabin for the night.
The next morning, we loaded up and headed south to Gainesville Texas, and then headed west to Wichita Falls. We then took Highway 277 to Abilene, then 20 into Midland.
The next morning, after breakfast we went to the air museum. It was very informative with a lot of displays, combat videos and pictures. They had a “nose art” room that had the sides cut out of planes that had nose art. We were really surprised at how explicit some of the art was, would definitely not go over today! Then we went into the hanger to see the planes. This was where I was kind of disappointed. I had thought there would be a lot of planes there, but there was not. They had a B-29 that was almost flyable, waiting on some engine parts, a B-24 Liberator, an F-82 Mustang (Two P-51 Mustangs attached by a short wing making it a twin engine fighter). There was a HUGE British bomber with 4 radial engines with counter rotating props. They had an F-111 and an F-14 that was one of the planes that shot down Libyan fighters back in the 1980’s.
A guy that worked there told me that the Air Force is made up of people that own WW2 planes but live all over the country. If we wanted to see them we would have to come there during a fly in or go to air shows across the country. It was a little disappointing, but still worth the trip.
We left after about 4 hours there and headed back towards Lawrence. I really can’t remember all the roads we took, we just kept heading north and south until we hit Oklahoma City. When we got to Lubbock, Texas, I wanted to stop at the Boom Boom Cabaret to rest a bit, but Glenda gave me THAT glare that only women have the exclusive rights to. So… I knew what I had to do… Move on. Once we hit Oklahoma City, we then detoured to Cleveland, Oklahoma to pay respects to my uncle’s grave, and then headed on to Lawrence on 75 highway.
It was a fun but tiring trip, we did 1500 miles in 34 hours on the Iron Butt, rested a day, and then did 1975 miles on this trip, so we were glad to see the house. We got rained on once, just enough to pull over and put rain gear on, and of course, 10 miles down the road it cleared off and got hot. The scenery was varied from hills, forests to FLAT lands, and the economy in the small towns is very depressing, a few years and a lot of them will be gone.
Robin Moore and Glenda Kelly