Day Trip - Lubbock, TX

 We hit the deck early yesterday for our day trip to Lubbock with our friends.  Our first stop was the National Ranch Heritage Center.  It is on the grounds of Texas Tech University.  The centers mission is to preserve the heritage of the ranching industry.  It has a great outdoor exhibit area with ranch homes and buildings which have been moved and restored.

The early ranchers  in Texas came west to ranch on "open range" land.  They built houses out of whatever materials were available.  The house on the right is a half-dugout house built in 1988 moved from Dickens County, TX.

 In addition to houses, they also have historical buildings:
a one room schoolhouse, a smokehouse, storage buildings, barns and this railroad depot complete with a locomotive and cattle cars. It is really like walking back in time.  
They also have several collections inside: spurs, branding irons, barbed wire and guns.  It is very well done and we highly recommend it if you are traveling in the area. We also saw several jackrabbits. They must think it is a good place to live even today (the only coyote we saw was bronze :).

After lunch, we headed out to the American Wind Power Center.  There are many working windmills displayed outside.  The small windmill on the left is an early power generator.  You can see the city of Lubbock in the distance.

Over 100 historic windmills are displayed inside.  Some have wheels with a diameter of over 25 feet.  Who knew there were so many different windmills? They also have a display of windmill weights.

Naturally, the whole place runs on wind generated energy provided by the Vestas Wind Turbine on the left.  It stands on a 164 ft steel tower. They also have one of these big guys dismantled.  They are huge.

We finished off with a little "wineing" at Caprock winery.  It was a great day.  Thanks so much to our friends Joe and Carmen.
 
See you down the road.....