Spring in the Flowerbed

 Sunday's temperatures were in a comfortable springlike range urging me outside to move the deck furniture from the garage to the deck, clean some windows, and check on the flowers in the perennial flower bed.

I am always excited to see the pasque flower survive the winter and make its appearance with flowers each year. This one is only two years old, so I think it will be a permanent resident.

I was excited to see the crocuses as I think I only saw one last spring. This was the only purple bloom.

And only one white flower, but lots of plants for rabbit dining! So far, they have not bothered the tulips.

The rabbits also chewed on these crocus. I have sprayed and spread granules hoping to discourage them. I will keep spraying and buy more sprinkles. Dang rabbits! 

The temps continue in the spring-like range this week, but daytime temps in the 40s, lows at night in the 20s, all with a wind from the north northwest make me long for something a bit warmer!

Day 2 of TX Road Trip

 The plan for Day 2 was to geocache in the counties along the western side of the panhandle. In his planing for these road trips, Hubby looks for geocaches with the usual criteria: easy find (we are usually on a time constraint), found recently, caches with cemetery or welcome to in the title, or something really unusual. Sometimes, the cache description does not indicate how quirky it might be and until we drive past do we realize, we should stop and take a look. Anyone following behind us on the road might wonder at his driving ability! 

This was one of the latter...quirky. It was on his list, but we did not intend to stop until we saw the display of oddities along the highway, including old vehicles, this carving from the trunk of an old cottonwood tree, and...

the Ten Commandments

container host for Lady Liberty

And then when we thought we had seen the last of the windmills...

Tallest Windmill in TX

so disappointed to learn it is not the original

from the ground looking up

the wheel did spin

And then there were more cemeteries...

Hispanic Cemetery

This is NOT typical of the Hispanic cemeteries we see in many other states. Those cemeteries have lots of decorations, flowers, statues, benches or chairs for resting and visiting at the grave sites.

73 graves from 1949 to present day

there is no historical info available for this one

Pauper Cemetery

This one was not easy to find. It was located next to the railroad tracks, in an industrial area outside of town, and had several oil wells pumping giving off a petroleum smell. I suppose the residents didn't mind, but it did bother me! It is also known as the Hockley County Cemetery.

not many residents

one source said 84 graves

 online records for 22 graves

one of the more recent interments

one from 1940

and a WWI veteran

Texas has many roadside historical markers but very few of the ones we passed had pull-offs to stop and investigate what happened at that particular location to warrant the placing of a marker and 4 road signs. Thanks to geocaching, this one called for a ditch drive because there was no pull off. (It was located at the edge of another cemetery.)

four headstone of Buffalo Soldiers

Information from the geocache description: 8 of a series of 11 – SEARCHING FOR WATER

An Educational Tour illustrating the 1877 Buffalo Soldier Expedition route.
After his return to Fort Concho, Lieutenant Charles Cooper wrote a letter to his father describing his experience of the tragic events. This geocache series traces the approximate route taken by the soldiers.

The story unfolds….

MAIN CHARACTERS
Military: Captain Nolan, Lt. Cooper, and 18 soldiers
Buffalo Hunter: 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 30, 1877

EXCERPT from Lt. Cooper's Letter to His Father written from Ft. Concho - Lt. Cooper describes the casualties and the separations....

We had now reduced our party to eighteen men, two officers and one buffalo hunter. We were almost completely used up. Our men had dropped back one by one, unable to keep up with us, their tongues were swollen and they were unable to swallow their saliva – for they like me, had no saliva to swallow. Men were grasping for breath and horses falling dead around us.

The Command were suffering so much for water, they were compelled to drink their own urine and their horses urine, having sugar along, I issued a liberal supply to the men which tended to make the urine palatable.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**The soldiers and the hunter are becoming disoriented and delusional. The officer’s maintain the military determination to survive.

Four Memorial Markers for the Buffalo Soldier losses nearby.

(The dairy/letter continues at the next historical marker in the series. We did not go there.)

the find in this cemetery was unremarkable

it was the town in which it is located that was memorable

The road to the cemetery was a dirt road at the edge of the town with a pasture on one side and dilapidated houses on the other.

Not just one or two, but 4 unoccupied houses. The town must not have any teenagers as the houses are still standing, and some of the windows still had unbroken glass panes.

this one was a mud brick house

It was a very small town. We are not certain if there was more than one current residence but it did have a post office, in a new brick building with a flag, indicating it was an operational post office. There were no other businesses. This unoccupied residence was on the other side of the highway as we passed through. 

One of our final stops of the day ~ The title of the cache was interesting to me. The log sheet was in a fake pile of dog poop. We were in cotton country, so I wasn't certain what or where the cache might be. I admit, fake dog poop was not what either of us expected! But we have seen it before so we knew what it was when we saw it next to the fence post. No stains in our cottons!

There was no Day 3 TX Road Trip. Hubby woke that morning (Tuesday) not feeling well. He spent the morning in the hotel bathroom and in bed. That wasn't part of Plan B! We were REALLY glad we weren't on the road and had planned for another day in Amarillo. This will be an AZ to SD trip we will remember for awhile! 

We added 17 counties to the TX map during this trip. Not as many as we would have liked or had on Plan A or Plan B. After all, geocaching is just a hobby, a game, a pastime...not an obsession or an addiction! 

Day 1 of TX Road Trip

 With Plan B in place and the two of us comfortable with it, it was time to hit the road and collect geocache finds in some more Texas counties. I am including a couple of maps as a reference point of where we are located and what we had planned. The maps will also show the number of TX counties and those in which we had traveled through and found at least one geocache.

We are staying in Amarillo, in the panhandle part of TX. The original plan was after two nights in Amarillo to travel to Lubbock and stay a few nights and then move onto Wichita Falls and spend a few nights before moving onto Oklahoma City for a few nights. The green counties show where we have found a geocache. The red are all the ones we have NOT found a cache. (Remember, you can click on the photo to get a larger version.)

The northern green counties are from previous stays in Amarillo while driving to and from SD and AZ. The green band through the middle is from a trip in 2017. 

Texas has 254 counties. SD has 66. Arizona has 15. Our SD and AZ maps are all green. TX will NEVER be all green for us, but it is for several geocachers we know. There are 3142 counties in the United States. One father and son geocaching team traveled through South Dakota collecting the last of all 3142 US counties! And you think the two of us are crazy??? (And I know this because they stopped at a couple of our placed geocaches and shared their story in the log they wrote when they found the cache. I checked their profile and yes, their US map of counties had only a few white spots after visiting the SD counties.)

So this is what we saw on our Day 1 TX road trip to the white counties in the top two rows of the panhandle.

This cache was called hole digger. I was expecting it to be a cemetery. It wasn't. Great photo opportunities while hubby looked for the geocache container.

a homemade well digger and location of the geocache

my uncles had a similar well digging truck

It was at the farm a number of times in the late 1950s as the well kept filling with sand and gravel. I think a new well was drilled near the old one or maybe new and better pipes were replaced in the old well. And maybe the well and the sand was always an issue until rural water came to the area. I do remember the sound of the moving metal blades, and the creaking and grinding when the wind changed direction changing the direction of the wheel and the blades. I don't ever remember trying to climb the windmill. I wonder if my brothers did?

another earlier version of a well digger

all windmills were donated by local farm families

Here is a very interesting blog about windmills and their history: The Old-Fashioned Windmill

I was hoping to see TX bluebells on this trip. This is as close as I got. Not bluebells. We saw many yards covered with the little purple flowers, more of a ground cover plant (weed?) and a great place for little black bugs to hide until they were disturbed.

didn't use my plant app to find out a name

location of another geocache

we did not find this one

plaque on this cemetery monument...

she has the largest monument in the little cemetery

another windmill museum

this one in Oklahoma

(I just learned the largest windmill museum is in Lubbock TX)

two geocaches at this stop

This museum also has a well digger hiding a geocache. One of the museum volunteers noticed our search and came to help. He had to call his son who placed the cache, but didn't remember exactly where he placed it on the equipment. Hubby finally made the find. Now the volunteer knows where it is and can help other geocachers, if needed. (This was Easter Sunday.)

I wondered why the top would be bigger than the base

then I read the Wikipedia explanation 

so, how was this windmill used?

The American windmill, or wind engine, was invented by Daniel Halladay in 1854 and was used mostly for lifting water from wells. Larger versions were also used for tasks such as sawing wood, chopping hay, and shelling and grinding grain. In early California and some other states, the windmill was part of a self-contained domestic water system which included a hand-dug well and a wooden water tower supporting a redwood tank enclosed by wooden siding known as a tankhouse. During the late 19th century steel blades and steel towers replaced wooden construction. At their peak in 1930, an estimated 600,000 units were in use. Firms such as U.S. Wind Engine and Pump Company, Challenge Wind Mill and Feed Mill Company, Appleton Manufacturing Company, Star, Eclipse, Fairbanks-Morse, Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company and Aermotor became the main suppliers in North and South America. These windpumps are used extensively on farms and ranches in the United States, Canada, Southern Africa, and Australia. They feature a large number of blades, so they turn slowly with considerable torque in low winds and are self-regulating in high winds. A tower-top gearbox and crankshaft convert the rotary motion into reciprocating strokes carried downward through a rod to the pump cylinder below. Such mills pumped water and powered feed mills, saw mills, and agricultural machinery. ~ Wikipedia

a soddy on the museum grounds

"This half-dugout soddy is reconstructed from dressed caliche rock and cedar with buffalo grass sod on the roof much as it was when it was originally built in 1904 south of Shattuck."

1901 Homestead house of David G. Steinert

also on museum grounds

And in another county...

a one room jail right beside the highway

no historical information

I am guessing the highway was widened, infringing on the jail's lot in this ghost town in TX. Just another interesting geocaching stop.

Another cemetery geocache and another county. Not all states allow geocaches to be placed in cemeteries. Sometimes the hide is outside the cemetery on a fence or a sign. Many times the hide is in a tree. Our very hardest and most remembered cemetery geocache find was in AZ, in a bouquet of fake flowers, in the stem of one of the flowers in the bouquet. The cemetery had many bouquets of fake flowers!

he looks for the geocache while I take photos

sometimes, I help him look

this was my favorite cemetery geocache of the day

Heart Cemetery

Maybe you are thinking I only take photos on these geocaching county road trips. This is how my lap looks. The clipboard holds all of Hubby's pre-trip planning and organization with lists and maps. The state map has the day's roads highlighted. My job is to get us on the right road. (That doesn't always happen.) The phone allows me to see the geocaches as we drive, if we have cell service. I am checking to see if the cache has been found recently, if there is a more interesting cache in the area, if the geocache is in the county we thought it was (sometimes human error plays a role), etc. The phone also is used to get us onto the correct street in a community and to know if the streets are dead ends, or even drivable. Hubby depends on a compass. I depend on a map. It can be a bone of contention sometimes. 

Day 2 TX Road Trip next.