Good Morning, it's my birthday! The wind is blowing outside as well as inside due to the gap in the door frame. Now lets turn on the TV and see what the networks have to say? Was there really a blizzard heading for the Texas Panhandle?
National Weather Service "A historic blizzard struck the Panhandles Monday, February 25 and continued through the afternoon hours. -- Within this band of snow, snowfall rates approached 2-3 inches per hour, thundersnow was observed, and extreme blizzard conditions were observed.-- The heavy snow and strong winds resulted in visibilities less than 50 feet at times for many of these locations. --- virtually crippled the entire area and made travel almost impossible. --- all roads in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles were closed, including Interstate 40 from the New Mexico border to the Oklahoma border and Interstate 27 from Amarillo to Lubbock. Conditions were so severe that Texas Department of Transportation crews were not able to work to keep the roads plowed. ---- Airport in Amarillo was shut down for most of the day. 19 inches of snow accumulated at NWS Amarillo along with a peak wind gust of 75 mph late Monday morning. A peak wind gust of 77 mph was also recorded--- Unfortunately, many motorists were also stranded."
(CNN) -- Phillip Prince has been sitting in his tractor-trailer, stuck on Interstate 40 near Groom, Texas, for, Nine hours and four minutes, to be precise.---But then they came upon what the National Weather Service is calling "a crippling, historic blizzard.". "It was pretty nasty when we first got into it," he said. "But then it turned into a whiteout."-----he's never seen it this bad,--- The line of trucks is five to six miles long.---The good news is that it has stopped snowing. The winds are still 55 mph, but the skies are clear though the roads are not.
AMARILLO — The blizzard that hammered the nation’s midsection broke a 120-year-old record in Amarillo for one-day snowfall in February with 19.1 inches.
National Weather Service meteorologist Krissy Scotten in Amarillo says the snowfall total Monday bested a record set Feb. 16, 1893, when 19 inches fell.
Okay, it is official, Mike and Cynthia are good Samaritans I'm sure their friends and families already knew it. Now they have two more fans from Minnesota.
Sure it would have been a great blog post. "stranded in an Amarillo Blizzard" but we will pass. We are safe and sound in San Angelo. We will stay here for a few days while I celebrate my birthday, battle my ear problems and decide where to go next. I'm now self medicating with pain killers, swimmers ear drops, drops for ringing ears and hot packs, no stinking ear ache is going to spoil our trip. And besides look at the huge candle Ruthie got me for my birthday! Turns out it was one of those ear wicking candles, she stuck it in my ear and lit it. I don't know if she made a wish or not? And just for the record I don't think it was effective. We stuck around the motel most of the day watched some TV, rested, worked on the blog and listened to the wind blow.
We went to Logans Roadhouse for my birthday, nice time, ear ache was starting to be a little weary. Pretty blustery as we made our way over to Walmart on the way home to pick up some TV dinners ( do they still call them that?) Maybe they are just fast home cooked meals now! At the motel we walked over to the attached bar and the owner bought me a birthday drink, nice people here!
Jeanie from the Stillwell trail ride emailed this saying to me when I mentioned of all the riding we did and were still in the same state.
. "the sun is riz the sun is set, and here I is in Texas yet". Reportedly wrote by a hobo on the side of a box car in the early 1900's.
Trying to figure out our exit plan to get home, the weather is so unpredictable we don't want to get to far North to early. We have a couple of business projects scheduled for late March so we need to think about heading home. I did some searching on Craigs list for rooms to rent and found an RV on a ranch by Fort Worth. Checked with Ruthie, sounded good to her, she's easy. Left messages for the ranch owner. We made a deal to rent the RV for two weeks and made plans to head up to Stephensville where it was parked. Evidentily it was not in use since they were going to get it moved and hooked up by the time we arrived.
San Angelo: Since we had some sun we decided to do a little site seeing while we were here. Our first stop was Fort Concho, here is Ruthie with ensign Mannequin, not my joke, the tour guides, all volunteers who want to preserve the history of the West. Established in 1867 the buildings are an amazing example of frontier ingenuity, they tried several different construction materials and finally used German stone craftsman from Fredricksburg to erect the structures. This was another frontier fort manned by the buffalo soldiers. 
These men faced hardships every day just to survive and protect the villages and travelers. It protected the Texas frontier for 22 years. The buildings looked like nice residencies. One of them had been converted into a museum of telephone communication. Kind of neat to see an old telephone switchboard. Just think, at one time every phone call had to be connected by a person. On the wall of my boyhood home was a phone that you cranked a little handle to get the operators attention, you told her who you wanted to call and she connected you. When a call came for my family our phone would ring two longs and a short. ( I think) That would also signal a curious neighbor on our party line that we had a call coming in. For most the temptation was to great to resist listening in. 
Tomorrow we head out for our ranch stay, let's see if Craig's list treated us as well.
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