Moving on from Sweetwater

We had reservations starting on Saturday at Thousand Trails Medina Lake. It was another "longish" day of driving for us (about 275 miles -- we like to stay under 200 miles of driving in a day) -- so we got a relatively early start. It was easier to get an early start from the Harvest Host as we had not hooked up to any utilities. We had not even put the jacks down -- our parking spot was uphill towards the front of the rig and we were concerned that if we used the jacks to level, we might end up raising the rear drive axle (which has the parking brakes engaged and keeps the rig from rolling) off the ground.

The GPS in Gracie directed us to take I-20 up toward Abilene and then head south on US highways - so we were heading east into the sun. It was a bit concerning when we saw that there were trucks with warning signs alerting us to an accident that had closed the interstate (if there's enough time to get signs out and close the freeway, it must be pretty major). Sure enough, over a rise and around a corner, we saw traffic being diverted off the highway...

... that's right, literally *off* the highway...

... across the grass (or what had been the grass) berm separating the highway from the frontage road. We were glad that a tractor trailer had safely made it before we started across -- it is always a bit scary to take Gracie "off road".

There were a number of vehicles involved... a couple were being loaded onto trucks to carry them away, a couple were still awaiting wreckers to come, I guess...

Traffic was still flowing on the other side of the freeway, although the wrecker was dealing with one of the vehicles in the median.

It is interesting in Texas because most of the highways / interstates have frontage roads that parallel the highway. In towns and cities, businesses are located along the frontage roads. I have seen where highway construction projects have relocated an exit from near a particular cross street to a location 1/2 mile or more away (which causes the GPS's that don't know about the road construction to be saying "take the exit for Main Street in 1/2 mile" when you're just then passing the new, temporary exit for Main Street). This was the first time I had ever seen using the ability to cross the berm as a way to get traffic off the highway due to an accident. I have seen places where it is obvious that a lot of vehicles have "made their own exit" onto the frontage road -- I always thought that was just folks who wanted to be able to get off near a business or their home without having to go through a stoplight on the frontage road -- but maybe it is because there had been an accident and vehicles were directed off the highway in that way.

After a short distance on the frontage road, we came to an entry ramp (a real one, not cross-country across a berm!) to get back onto the highway.

A few miles further, we left I-20 near Abilene, heading roughly south and a little east toward Fredericksburg, TX. The wildflowers were just starting to reach their beautiful peak -- the bluebonnets were pretty in a number of places,

...but what really surprised me were gorgeous arrays of Indian Paintbrush.

There weren't good places to stop to take pictures of the flowers (at least, not in Gracie towing the Jeep), but maybe we'll get to see some when we're out and about in the Jeep at some point!

We got to Thousand Trails Medina Lake in the early afternoon. While there are some full hookup sites, the ranger indicated that it was likely that all the 50A full hookup sites were taken, and we had decided we'd just as soon have a 50A electric/water site in preference to a 30A full hookup. The ranger recommended we head down toward the lake to some sites down there.

I had been concerned about checking in to Thousand Trails on Saturday -- while we had a reservation, that only reserves a camping spot, not necessarily one in which we fit or having the hookups that we would want. However, Thousand Trails Medina Lake is a huge campground - over 380 sites, and, by my rough calculation, over 300 acres. Even at that, it could be filled on a nice weekend in the spring, with people enjoying the lake... if there were a lake...

We got a lakeside site... do you see the lake?

In this picture, you can see across "the lake".

At this time, the lake is only about 3% full. When Dwayne and I were here in December, 2014, it was also only about 3% full. However, amazingly, it was evidently full in July, 2019.

I found some information about the lake here: https://www.edwardsaquifer.net/medina.html

It would be interesting to be here when the lake is also in residence!

Visiting the WASP Museum - part 2

Our Friday visit to the National WASP Museum continued...

We then went over into Hanger 2 where there were four planes displayed that were of the same vintage as the WASP trainers and which have been restored and still fly today. I, unfortunately, didn't get the names and descriptions, but found some on the website (https://www.waspmuseum.org/aircraft/) -- more information about each plane can be found there too.

Boeing Stearman PT-17 “Kaydet”
Primary Trainer

North American AT-6 “Texan”
Basic Trainer

Cessna UC-78 “Bamboo Bomber”
Advanced Trainer

Vultee BT-13 “Vultee Vibrator”
Basic Trainer

There were exhibits in hanger 2 also...

Carl and I both noticed this one -- our friend, Bob, used to love spending $2 bills (mainly because it confounded the cashiers who didn't have a place to put it in their cash register and some didn't even think it was legal tender). We called his wife, Laura, to tell her that we were reminded of Bob at the WASP museum and to suggest that Mesa could have determined Bob's impact on their economy by checking on the flow of $2 bills!

Some stories of the unintended impacts of women being trained as pilots...

Some examples of the uniforms

Jobs after the WASP training was completed:

Use of Jeeps to guide aircraft

Example of a Jeep of the era

Link trainer -- Carl remembers that his high school had one of these -- WWII era -- they used it in the 1970s!

We were so glad that we had booked this Harvest Host stay. We were concerned that we might get there too late to be able to tour the museum since it closed at 5pm, but we got there at about 2:30pm and spent about 2 hours enjoying the museum!

Visiting the WASP Museum - part 1

After a few hours of driving from New Mexico on Friday,

...we arrived at the National WASP WWII Museum at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, TX. It is a Harvest Host and we were booked to spend the night there.

We started our visit in Hangar 1.

Some of the influential individuals on the WASP program were identified...

Nancy Harkness Love

Jacqueline Cochran

Information about the women to joined the program as trainees.

We were amazed that 25,000 applied -- 3000 of them had their flying license before applying.

Modeling "Zoot" Suits

The WASP training program, and in fact, the WASP program itself, lasted only about 2 years. When the war ended, and the men came home, the jobs they were doing were resumed by the men.

There were bios with hand prints and signatures in concrete of some of the WASP graduates. I looked through them all, looking for where they had come from (I only saw this one from Dallas). Carl noticed how long they lived -- almost all lived into their 90s, and a few lived past 100 years old.

One of the jobs that a WASP might do after graduation... what could go wrong?

A video with Beverly Beesemyer about being a WASP tow target pilot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZsHny3wjQY

WASP towing a target sleeve with and A-24A Banshee in 1944.

38 of the WASP graduates died while in service - they were recognized with their pictures displayed here and a short description of the circumstances of their deaths. There were many that had machine failure of their aircraft. Others probably made poor decisions that caused a crash. The military did not pay for services or transportation. Their fellow WASP would take up a collection among friends to send them home on the train with an escort.

Interesting that the women in WASP were not recognized until 1972 when the government touted that women going to the military academies would be the first women to fly military planes. The WASP spoke up and were recognized.

An interesting picture from 1942 with a re-creation 62 years later in 2004.

More from Hangar 2 in another post!

Note: Harvest Hosts is putting out a new website... and they put up a video on Monday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgX90Qe6zFU   Note: remember what day Monday was when watching this video!

Leaving New Mexico, entering Texas...

 We left The Ranch on Friday morning, heading east...

Since we got a special rate from The Ranch, we had to pay for our electricity usage, so on Thursday afternoon, Carl took a picture of the electric meter and went to the office to pay.

After a little over an hour of driving, we were leaving New Mexico...

... and entering Texas.

Back in Texas!