We got home in the late afternoon yesterday. We drove just a bit over 3,330 miles in 10 days. We had a good time seeing our son's family and attending the graduation, despite it raining everyday that we were in the Houston area. We also saw a few friends coming and going.
As for mask wearing, I was surprised how many people were wearing masks, even in Texas. Granted, some stores only indicated that masks were recommended not mandatory, but most people wore them anyway. We did note that restaurants in Texas were full and doing business as if there was no pandemic. New Mexico and and even Arizona seemed a bit more careful with keeping people socially distanced in restaurants and such. Note that we stated only at Hampton Inns and here is was a bit odd. Our first night was in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and the complimentary breakfast was included, but it wasn't buffet style, like in the past, they served you. The same in Boerne, Texas. However, in Katy, where we stayed four nights, it was a boxed breakfast which you had to eat in your room. It was either a bagel and cream cheese or a breakfast sandwich that you had to heat in the microwave. They included an apple, a container of yogurt and small container of juice (apple or orange). But in Waco and Pecos, it was like nothing had changed, a full open breakfast bar with all the options. But on our last night in Tucson, it was back to being served by the hotel staff. Now as for mask wearing, all of the hotel locations had signs posted saying that masks were mandatory in all public areas of the hotel and they pretty much enforced it in all of them.
One comment about the 'back roads' in Texas. We drove, for the first time, cross-country from Waco to Pecos, taking only US and state highways and at the end, even a Texas 'farm road'. Now the vast majority of these were two-lane highways, but with an occasional passing lane. There was one stretch of highway coming into San Angelo which was divided, two lanes in each direction, but the crossroads where still uncontrolled (no traffic lights or interchanges). And yet, on virtually all of the these roads, the speed limit was 75 mph. And some of those roads felt pretty narrow when you had to share them with a bunch of 18-wheelers.
While on our 'cross-country' jaunt we saw lots of wind turbines and oil wells, although I have to say that of what they call pump-jacks, perhaps only about 2%-3% were pumping. And we only saw what looked like three new wells being drilled.
And we have a recommendation. If you're ever in the Tucson area and you've got a half day to spend, we can highly recommend the Pima Air & Space Museum. Now it's best to go on a cooler day as most of the planes are outdoors. It was 97Ëš when we arrived on Wednesday afternoon so we only visited the indoor displays, but they were still great, with four very large buildings containing close to a hundred planes. There must be a couple hundred on display outside (see image below from Google Earth). I really wanted my wife to see a C-47 up close as that's the plane her father flew in WWII. They had one on display, but you couldn't get inside it. We missed one at the Palm Springs Air Museum the last time we visited there a couple of years ago, as it was on loan for some air show (it's still in flying condition).
OCU
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