Those are the breaks!

 

Howdy, Campers! It's Silver Cliche' here again writing to you tonight from Copper Breaks State Park somewhere south of Quanah, Texas. I'm not sure where that is either. I believe this is territory that was once home to the Fa-gah-wee Indians. You remember them right… relatives of the Hi-cah-wee Tribe. Both had a terrible sense of direction and when they would stop to ask other tribes for directions they would always begin with “We're the Hi-cah-wee”... No?... Think about it.

Anyway, the day started with great news. No rain! (more on that later). We arose with the sun on tranquil Joe Pool Lake (that still doesn't sound right to me). We read, drank coffee, had pancakes, and started to prep for the road. At 10:00 we pulled out, made our necessary stops on the way out of the park (no… I do not think I ever will describe the complete departure sequence for a travel trailer… this is a family friendly blog… except that part about the Fa-gah-wee tribe). We headed West even though it was slightly faster to head north into the Dallas Metroplex and those darned toll roads.

We had a slightly longer day of driving than we had planned because the campground I had booked (Lake Arrowhead State Park) had been closed until further notice because of… yes, rain and flooding. So, we were not going to Wichita Falls this trip. Instead we pressed on a bit farther to Quanah in Hardeman County. There are 254 counties in Texas. That's too many for even the Governor to remember. Most are plain square shapes which makes identifying them on a map really hard. However, Hardeman is easier to spot. I you think of the map of Texas, Hardeman is on the Oklahoma border precisely where the panhandle meets the rest of Texas. You know the panhandle, right? That's the stick on the top that holds up that unbalanced part of Oklahoma. Said differently, if Texas was a projectile, the panhandle is the part you would pick it up by to throw it. Anyway, that's where we are.

There were two options to get here. 1.) The interstate (that would be I-40) or 2.) US and state highways. Both had 75 MPH speed limits (seriously… an average 2 land country road here is posted at 20 miles per hour faster than one flys when landing a Cessna… the pilot of a single engine plane making an emergency landing on a Texas highway should be instructed to look behind them to make sure they are not run over by a driver who is texting while doing the legal limit in a Camry.) We took the state roads. Along the way we decided to stop for gas and gas… er… I mean Mexican food in the little town of Jacksboro, Texas (no, I have never heard of it either). It's the county seat of Jack County – there, now you know the names of two Texas counties. You only have 252 to go. You're welcome.

These unplanned lunch stops almost always start as a drag and end up as a treat for us. If you follow these pages you know I ramble on about “authenticity” a lot. There are few places we have been to that are as authentic as Jacksboro. It presents itself as having no aspirations beyond being what it is, and that's just fine with it. I'm not saying Jacksboro is dead. I went to their web site. They have four city activities listed for this month including “siren testing” on May 18. I could make this stuff up, but thanks to the internet and Americans just being themselves I don't need to. In Jacksboro the most prominent building (by a factor of six) is the County Courthouse. Here she is:

 

An interesting feature of the streets around the courthouse is the parking. In addition to angled parking at the curbside, there is a row of angled parking spots in the middle of each street. This creates a sort of boulevard using parked pickup trucks and aging Chevys as a center median. The angling works so traffic coming down the street in either direction can pull in. I speculated on how this came to be since I've never seen it in any other town I've been to. After significant pondering and beard rubbing (accompanied by repeated “hmmmm”s and the occasional side-to-side head shake) I think I have it! I concluded that Jacksboro saw itself as an up and coming place when the town square and courthouse was being planned. It was clear they would need lots of parking. You know… like Dallas. So they made the streets very wide. Decades later when fessing up to the shortfall in growth, but seeing the need for more parking to serve the increased use of cars by locals and visitors alike, a local genius (hey… this is my theory… stop questioning its potential to be true!) said “I know… we could park cars in the middle of the streets around the courthouse”. The rest is history.

 

Back to our journey. We have now totally left the east and are in the heart of the plains. As testament to that we saw several firsts for this trip today: The first wind farm (hundreds of turbines all stock still), the first working oil wells, the first prickly pear cacti and the last hills for a while. You may say to yourself: “Hey, I would like to see first hand these things that Silver Cliche' describes. Why should he have all the fun?” Well, here… let me show you what I spent hour after hour looking at today in this "Silver Cliche'-eye view":

You see, kids… bringing you these tales of America takes buns of steel and a high threshold for windshield boredom. I only share the best bits with you.

Speaking of stopping for lunch, as you may recall we are fans of TripAdvisor. Not only does it collect a huge number of opinions from people who live in or travel through the areas we go to, it is sometimes a source of perplexing amusement. Today was the best example of that ever. I was scanning towns on our planned route to see if any held promise as lunch spots. Down the road a piece from Jacksboro is Olney, Texas – population 3,223 and dropping. Their top rated restaurant is Don Antonio's. It has five stars (out of five) and exactly one review which is six months old. That single review is written in Italian. Thoughtfully, TripAdvisor has a button next to the review which clearly will activate Google Translate against the Italian text to present it back to the reader in English. Fantastico! I said and I hit the button. Here's precisely what I got (cut and pasted from my browser):

Try !!, pending before the meal, max five minutes that I forget them on arrival of the

beautiful girl"

Sep 28, 2015 A TripAdvisor Member

On Friday with only nine US dollars at will fry fish, very tasty, with side dishes of all kinds of vegetables. There are quantity problems, if the stomach holds, because it is self-service.

I found this as unhelpful as it was hilarious. I'm still not sure about the “if the stomach holds” part. I hope the Italian visitor to Olney, Texas got home ok.

We pressed on. The absolutely beautiful day that had carried us through Jacksboro and Olney (clear, around 70, dry.. a perfect spring Texas day!) began to change. Clouds to the west began to build. Then thicken. Then darken. Then rain in the distance. Then lightning. Then it hit us. The wind blew to the point Mrs. C' said she could feel the truck move every time the wind hit the trailer. I was focused on the road and the fact that I was now going 25 miles per hour below the speed limit and wasn't sure that was slow enough. As the wind and rain picked up at one point I cleared my throat and prepared to shout “WE HAVE ROTATION” (fortunately I didn't have to). It was intense. There have been instances in Texas over the past few days of grapefruit sized hail and this storm was the type that could produce it. One challenge with our shiny home on wheels is that it's made of aluminum. Aluminum is rather soft. While grapefruit sized hail can put grapefruit sized dents in the steel of our truck, it can put grapefruit sized holes through our aluminum home. Fortunately I didn't have to dial up my insurance company today and start off “Well… you'll never believe what happened to us today in Texas...”

So on to Copper Breaks. We got in about 3:30 PM. The campground was nearly empty so they said “head down this road and pick any spot you want”. We complied. On the short drive we saw many rabbits and two road runners. After feeding and settling the dogs, I took a walk and found a few sights I think you might enjoy. This would be a bird hunters paradise. I flushed several grouse and there are doves everywhere. They were a bit too fast for me to photograph, but the landscape and some flowers held still long enough for me to share them with you.

 

 

Finally, our panorama for the day. Taken about ¼ mile from our campsite on the entrance road to the campground. I had to dig around to understand what put the “breaks” in Copper Breaks State Park. The best I could find was a definition of the Missouri Breaks and it reads: "The Breaks" by locals, it is a series of badland areas characterized by rock outcroppings, steep bluffs and grassy plains. Works for me. See if you feel the same from this pic:

 

That's it for today, Campers. Tomorrow we continue northwest and head to “the grand canyon of Texas” for our last night in the Lone Star State. That destination would be Palo Duro Canyon for those of you who are preparing for a run at Jeopardy!.

SC'