30 May: Pratt, KS to Vaughn, NM

With an early start, it was breakfast time in Liberal Kansas. If you asked me what was special about Liberal, I probably couldn't think of anything but when I was welcomed by Dorothy, Toto and all the gang, I remembered.

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Ordered a full stack of pancakes for breakfast. Now I can eat a lot of pancakes, but I met my match. 8 Cakes of about 7 inches across. That'll keep me going the rest of the day.

So much farming country. One forgets where all our food is grown, and going to a grocery store really doesn't help matters. Too bad there aren't videos to watch about how the food we purchase is grown, processed and delivered to us.

Couldn't pass up this photo of a hobby horse pumping oil from within a wheat field. We'll call this Wheat Oil

Passed through the panhandle of Oklahoma, the country is quickly changing from farming to ranching. Cattle can best roam the hills foraging for food. Definitely less rain in these parts.

Advice: if you ever drive through Dalhart, TX is is best to be prepared for an overwhelming smell sensation. Cattle Feed Lots! On the south side of the town there were to 2 cattle feeding lots, one on each side of the highway 54. Hillside after hillside of cattle in holding pens, making the landscape black with bodies of cows. I couldn't be for sure but there must be hundreds of thousands of cattle.

See this U-tube short from another traveler: 

Passed through Texas in its upper left corner into New Mexico. Stopped for a while in Tucumcari and enjoyed the nostalgia of Route 66. When I40 was built, it virtually destroyed the local traffic through so many smaller  towns along this route. 

Finally came to rest in Vaughn, NM at the crossroads of US54 and US60. What an example of a high desert climate: lots of open space, low growing shrub like cactus and plants, wind swept country.