My wife and I went on the first weekday after the rain quit, early, to avoid being charged for parking and admission. We just wanted to sample the food available from various booths.
We also avoided crowds.
More of these to come...
Lubbock has enjoyed lots of rain! Some pics of the results:
The playa lakes got full:
The rain almost washed out the annual South Plains Fair. We went when the rain finally stopped, and it was really nice out there! Pics of the Fair this year will follow in a subsequent post.
A lot of these views are of Idalou at the edge, at the city limits, but if you drive out to Lubbock's city limits you would see much the same thing at this time of year.
Lubbock, of course, is growing ever larger and more populous. Not good in the long term, because there won't be enough water to support that population. You could safely say that Lubbock and all the other communities in this area that rely on the aquifer are on a road to nowhere...
Lubbock has two surface water sources but one is at 4% capacity and the other is dwindling rapidly.
At the very least, we will see very strict and severe limits on water use in the future, and that will make a lot of people very unhappy. Restrictions have been placed on agricultural use already, and the farmers hate that. My land, my water, they say. They hate the idea of having their water use regulated in any way. At any rate, these pics complete Idalou...
Idalou, by contrast with Ropes, is a much better looking and more prosperous community. It is not really isolated, and whatever you can't find in Idalou will be nearby in Lubbock. But you could survive in Idalou without a car, if you can walk at least a half-mile. In Ropes, if you can't drive you're going to starve to death.
Somebody bought the building above, in downtown Idalou, and they are working to restore it.
Idalou is bounded by cotton fields, for the most part. Some farmers are growing corn as well.
We'll finish Ropes today. It seems that Ropesville might have seen better days but I don't know when. I guess I could mention that Ropes also has no barber shop? The list of what Ropes does not have is a long one. UPDATE! Conditions in Ropesville have probably improved since we visited. I believe they've got some kind of large convenience story with gas pumps and prepared food now, and there are some housing developments, I believe. At any rate, I'll never visit this town again, although not long ago I drove through it while on the way to Brownfield. I didn't stop in Ropes but I noted that it seemed to have improved.
If I lived in Ropes my top priority would be to move away from Ropes, to a town that had, at the very least, a gas station and a supermarket.
That was Ropes and my wife and I truly feel sorry for anyone who has to live there.
