Closed on Monday…

Whip In RV Park, Big Spring, TX

We’re back in our old stomping grounds from over 50 (yikes!) years ago, Big Spring and Midland, Texas. Since this was a place we wanted to stop anyway we wanted to visit with Don Beaver and his wife, Lorraine. Don used to be the General Manager of the Tucson Country Club and is now the GM of the Midland Country Club. What a mistake TCC made when they let Don go! He and Lorraine gave us a tour of the beautiful MCC and then took us out to lunch (the Club is closed on Mondays) at the Café in the Garden—more on lunch later.

MCC is fabulous! The club itself is two stories with all the usual country club amenities (including a “men’s grill” (whaddya expect, it’s West Texas Oil Country!) including golf course, tennis, pool, dining rooms, etc. It sits on about a square mile of land, a “section” I think the oil men around here would say. Don has exciting plans for the Club for the future and has already implemented some ideas we at TCC could enjoy: a once-a-month, super-special steak night with the best beef available for Chef (Foy, also from TCC) to prepare for the members; special “taco night” (not just your ordinary tacos, however: shrimp, fish, beef, chicken, you name it with all the fixins). Lots of other ideas, all sounding very exciting. We miss Don and Lorraine at TCC!

They took us to lunch at a garden center cum restaurant: a normal place to go to buy plants, dirt, trees, rocks, etc. for your garden, but in the center of it all is a really great restaurant open for lunch from 11 to 2. We all enjoyed our lunches but mine was especially mouthwateringly delicious. It brought back memories of a sandwich I had in Aspen on my way across country on the return leg of an air ambulance trip; until now, that was my all-time favorite lunchtime meal. But Café at the Garden (www.alldredgegardens.com) in Midland now has that beat! I had turkey and bacon on some of the most delicious thick, homemade, whole wheat bread, with avocado, tomato, mayo and some additional flavoring that I couldn’t identify that made it a disarmingly named but scrumptiously memorable Turkey Avocado Sandwich. The closest Tucson comes to that is the café at Tohono Chul or the café in Tucson Botanic Gardens but none matches this!

That was a pleasant break for us on our 900+ mile jaunt from Tucson to Arlington, Texas, for our next baseball game, the Rangers vs Athletics on the 15^th. Meanwhile we are dealing with high winds, tornado forecasts, rain, and sundry other problems (the motorhome wouldn’t start this morning. Luckily we have a “battery boost” which we definitely needed. Now we have to figure out WHY the battery was dead. Brand new batteries!)

West Texas is quite beautiful right now if you can ignore the aforementioned high winds, tornado forecasts, and rain. The land is covered with orange, white, yellow, and occasionally blue and purple, wildflowers. Of course these are interspersed among oil wells, wind farms, and derelict truck dumps.

We wanted to see the air Commemorative Air Force and American Airpower Heritage Museum in Midland (closed on Monday); the Big Spring Hanger 25 Museum (closed on Monday), this was on the old Webb AFB where Randy went through pilot training; the Museum of the Southwest (closed on Monday); the George W. Bush Childhood Home (closed on Monday), oh, I am SO disappointed about that; the Heritage Museum (closed on Mondays); Not to mention Potton House in Big Spring, home of an Englishman who worked for the Texas and Pacific Railroad (closed on Monday). I will admit the Petroleum Museum was open on Monday, but I have a hard time working up any enthusiasm for oil. Unless it has “olive” in front of it.