BOB WILLS MUSIC FESTIVAL
IN TURKEY TEXAS!
April 25th 2011
We continued on highway 70 west, meeting fog and rain and drove many misty miles. After our 4 hour, 4 PM, 200 mile day we found ourselves at one of my favorite campgrounds, Quartz Mountain resort near Lone Wolf in the far western end of Oklahoma ! It was still gloomy but we did see places on the sky that showed pale patches of blue so we were hopeful that the bad weather was over. We walked around the park with the dogs, saw a small herd of white tail deer grazing in the park. As we walked back to the MotherShip and noticed a big black cloud heading towards us very quickly! The whole sky became black in a matter of minutes. Safely inside, I began fixing supper when the hail first started pounding the roof! It was small hail… about mothball size… but plentiful! In a matter of minutes the ground was covered! The noise inside the MotherShip was deafening! So loud we could hardly make ourselves heard. Then just as quickly as it began, it was over! We were about to go outside for a look when it started up again, just not nearly as hard and almost as soon as it started, it stopped. The ice balls melted quickly and I couldn’t help but wonder where the deer went when the hail began to fall, that would have hurt! I could imagine them taking shelter under the covered picnic shelters! A few minutes later, the deer appeared in our campground unfazed by the hail and continued grazing behind the MotherShip!
April 26th 2011
Less gloom today! Still cloudy, but with frequent patches of blue! Still windy but the occasional glimpses of blue sky made the day better!
TEXAS! We were headed for Turkey, Texas to meet our friends Karen and Tom Whaley from VA. They spend about 6 weeks every spring dancing around Texas!
Texas Swing they call it! April 29, 30th and May 1st is known for the Bob Wills Festival! Bob Wills made his home in Turkey Texas and he is credited as the creator of Western Swing music in the 1940’s. He and his band of Texas Playboys played a new style of music some called “Country Jazz” because his band had a horn section. Saxophones, trumpets, etc. not commonly found in country music. Imagine Glenn Miller with a cowboy hat and Texas drawl and you have a glimmer of what country swing is all about! This was the third year that Karen and Tom went to Turkey Texas for the dance festival. We got there on a Tuesday just as this festival was warming up. Local fields became overnight campgrounds. The City of Turkey had it’s own campground in a field near town that offers water and electric. As we were driving through the small town, we passed the only Mexican restaurant and there was Tom yelling “HEY!” He got our attention and we pulled over to park and went inside to eat supper and catch up on all our gossip! Tom and Karen are two of our favorite people! They even wrote a song about Chuck and I and sang it at our wedding reception! It was great! After eating our enchiladas and tacos, we followed Tom to the campground! It was a big open field with water and electric sites along the fence.
April 27th 2011
The next evening we went to the Church of Western Swing! It seems that Bob Wills bought this old abandoned church and turned it into a meeting place for Country Swing Bands and music !
The outside of the church is very plain, not much of a hint as to what is going on inside
(below- Chuck, Tom and Karen with one of the entertainers)
The inside is wall-to-wall autographed photographs of famous and infamous folks from the world of country music! Old playbills of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys showing they have played all over Texas and the west! Bob Wills has long gone to the dance hall in the sky, but his music lives on. The church is alive with sparkly stars hanging from the ceiling, rope lights and small white Christmas lights draping the ceiling and walls… it is 2 stops from being gaudy. Flashy yes, gaudy… almost! The bands play where the preacher and choir used to be on Sundays, part of the pews have been cleared away from down front so there is room for the dancers to swing their partners.
(Tom and Karen dancing to the band at The Church of Western Swing!)
There were several very good dancers that evening but Tom and Karen were among the very best! Chuck and I don’t dance, but we like this music. We plan to come back to Turkey Texas next year for a much longer stay! We already made reservations for a week next year!
In the middle of downtown Turkey is this beautiful old gas station ! It is closed, but it is so cool with the old gravity gas pumps and everything still intact!
April 28th 2011
We didn’t drive far, only about 50 miles south to Floydada TX. The city of Floydada provides a free campground with water and electric and a dump
Station.
Finally, in Texas, the rains stopped, blue skies emerged and we were happy campers. We arrived in Floydada early…. took advantage of the free wifi, and caught up on all the tornados spawned over our heads and taking their toll in the southeastern USA. It felt good to catch up on the news and facebook and to email friends. We just took the afternoon off and relaxed!
April 29th 2011
A beautiful morning! Blue Sky! Sunshine! I am definitely a solar person! I was energized by the second day of gorgeous weather! We left Floydada about 10am headed to Bottomless Lakes State Park near Roswell, NM. It was a great drive but boring as most of the day was just cotton field after cotton field for miles after mile on highway 380. The campsites at Bottomless Lake State Park were huge! Pull thru sites could easily have plenty of room for the largest RV you could imagine. We fit the MotherShip and truck and my TrailBlazer towing a 12’ Utility trailer and still had plenty of room to spare! We had already decided we were going to stay here two nights. We wanted some down time from the highways!
The swimming area was amazing! Still too cold here for me to swim, but if you look close you can see two heads bobbing in the other side of the beach! Surrounding the beach was this wonderful shelter full of picnic tables! I am sure it gets very hot in Roswell NM in the summer, so the shade given here would be very welcome!
It was very windy while we were here, but we enjoyed our two days reading, resting and walking about with the dogs. We decided to call our Camp Area Managers in Utah to let them know where we were and that we would see them on the 20th of May as planned. NO! We needed to be there no later than the 10th of May as the campground opened up on the 13th of May! YIKES! We were thinking we had almost 2 weeks to unpack and move in to our new home in NM and now we find out we are expected in Northern Utah no later than the 10th of May, 10 days earlier than we had thought!
No time! No Time! We hurried on to Truth or Consequences to our home there and spent 3 days trying to unload the TrailBlazer but we ran out of time before we got to the Utility Trailer!
Next blog will be about our Campground in Spring Hollow!
Are we almost caught up yet? haha!
Happy Trails from Geri and Chuck
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