Day 31 - Groom, Texas to Amarillo, Texas

Day 31 of our tour
November 3, 2016
54.4 miles today
(1435.4 miles, cumulative)
907 feet of climbing
(56,668 feet of climbing, cumulative)


It was an overcast day with no rain, cooler temperatures and a sidewind from the north that occasionally became a tailwind. We made good time to Amarillo and have been having a great visit with Jean's old Albuquerque friends, John and Cloris Thurston.

Our day in photos includes these below...

We spent last night in Groom, Texas. Not only does Groom have the Leaning Tower of Britten (see Day 30) but it also has a huge cross. We took a photo of it across a large cotton field:

The large size of this particular cotton field caught our attention:

The massive size of the wind turbines also caught our attention! Look carefully and you can see Jean and the bike at the base of this one:

This unit below was not functioning. A service truck is parked at the base, and the door on the tower was open. We wondered about going and asking for a tour, but a sign made it clear that everyone had to have hard hats, steel-toed boots and safety glasses to go past the gate where we stood to take the photo. We decided we probably would not be offered a tour:

I took this photo to show the endless flat expanse of the fields that surrounded us much of the day. Texas was very flat, and just went on and on:

The city of Vancouver, BC has painted orca whales as street art located in various public places, and the city of Amarillo, Texas has a number of painted horses. Here is one example. The "DB" brand was for the jewelry store in front of which it stood. (Dunlevy and Byrd, I think.)

Always fond of grasses, Jean took a photo of some grass nicely displayed with trees on the streets of Amarillo:

We have not been on a bike path since Illinois, but today another rail line turned bike trail was on our route through the city. It ran for several miles. Our friends told us they looked at a well-priced house years ago that backed on to the tracks. (Thus, the low price.) The house's value went up quite a bit when the rails came out and the trail went in, but they had already bought another house.

Next to the paved trail were planted various species of trees every so often, and plaques were posted next to each planting naming the trees. You can see two of these areas on the right and left of the trail just beyond the overpass. Jean thought this display of trees was very neat:

We're going for a hike in a local canyon tomorrow. Also, I'll open up the internal gear rear hub and see what I find. We stopped at a Carquest Auto Parts store located near the above bike path and they had the pressure hose seal unit that contains the spring I may need to replace what might be a broken one inside the hub.

That's it from Amarillo tonight.