Day 9 – Traveling Texas from Perryton to Gainesville
diannbayes
Day 9 and the final leg of our perimeter tour around Texas found us in the northeast corner of the Texas Panhandle in Lipscomb County. Towns in the county include Booker, Darrouzett, Follett, and Lipscomb. I actually went to school in Follett in the late 70’s and early 80’s, so I was very familiar with the area. Made up of mostly farmers and ranchers, the people here are just plain good people.
We particularly liked the entry signs in both Booker and Darrouzett. The next 9 exits sign Booker had endeared us to the community. As for Darrouzett, we would love to know what happens at the Deutsches Fest. We figured the food must be fantastic.Our stop in Follett meant the world to me. I had visited briefly a few years ago with my husband. I was thrilled to introduce the small town to my friends, Morgan and Debra. I worked at the restaurant in the picture, now Nana’s Cafe, formerly the Panther Cove Drive-In when I was in high school. I snapped a few photos of the inside of the restaurant through the window. It’s pretty small but it didn’t seem that way at the time. Good memories!We saw that some type of rodeo action was taking place in Canadian so we snapped a few shots of the competitors.We learned when we went through Wheeler that Astronaut Alan Bean was born there. We knew something was up when we saw a large statue of an astronaut and it was right outside the Wheeler Historical Museum.
When we were on the west side of the panhandle, we crossed old Route 66 in Vega. We crossed it again in Shamrock. Enjoyed a great lunch at Hasty’s and stopped to take photos of the Visitor Information Center. The center even had Tesla charging stations in the back, a big contrast to the historic site.
Scenes from Shamrock
Once we reached Childress at the bottom east corner of the panhandle, we headed east again.
Snapped a pic of this mural in Chillicothe, a town of around 1,000 people.
We reached one of the larger cities on our tour around the Lone Star State when we arrived in Wichita Falls, which has a population of just over 100,000. We had to make a stop at one of the legendary buildings in town – the World’s Littlest Skyscraper.
World’s Littlest Skyscraper in Wichita Falls
Boots, baseball gloves, and classic cars identify the community of Nocona.
Did you know…Nocona is the Classic Car Capital of Texas?
As were one town away from wrapping up our tour when we came through Saint Jo. We saw this great cowboy mural of hands and rope on the side of a building and had to stop so we could share it with you.
No worse for wear, we survived the 3,331-mile quest across Texas. We’re still determining how many towns, cities, and counties we went through along the way, and I’ll share more in a later post. For now, we are thankful we made it with few challenges, lots of laughs, and amazing memories.If you were wondering what it looked like, here’s our trip in a nutshell. We’re adding my original location of San Angelo to the mix, as I left from a different location than Debra and Morgan in order to get to Gainesville, where we began our trip. We’re also adding a few more pins to the map, as we didn’t always have connectivity or sometimes, we just didn’t remember to do it. It will be even redder once we get that done.This sunset greeted me as I headed to San Angelo and Debra and Morgan headed back to their homes. It was an amazing trip! We learned a lot along the way. Travel definitely unites us and introduces diversity.
In the words of the song made famous more recently by the great Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, “I saw miles and miles of Texas all the stars up in the sky. I saw miles and miles of Texas gonna live here till I die.”
