Abilene to Lovington

This morning, we happily listened to more of Karen's stories from her childhood. At one point her father had 2,000 sheep and she remembers helping him pack down the wool in giant burlap sacks! We really, really loved staying with Karen and are so thankful that Matt connected us with his grandmother because our visit Abilene turned into a great surprise. Before leaving Abilene we stopped by Vleta's, a store that Karen had mentioned as selling the best pralines. We bought a few for her and delivered them with a thank you card!

Initially we were going to drive straight to Lovington but Josh found some wineries in Lubbock so we planned a new route. Along the way to Lubbock we started seeing fields of enormous windmills and had to stop and take some photos. These are with my new lens and they look so great! I love my birthday present :) There was also a creepy house on the property that turned into a neat photo!

We only had time for one winery and we chose McPherson Cellars. Most of the grapes were from California so the wine was pretty good! Josh wanted to visit the Texas Tech campus so we briefly visited it before heading back on the road to Lovington.

When we got to New Mexico we gained an hour, so now we're on Mountain Standard Time and two hours behind Florida! I was worried that we were getting into Lovington too late, but we soon realized we had never driven at sunset before. We really timed it perfectly because we were able to enjoy a beautiful sunset across enormous flat plains!!

Our host, Trenton, met us at the one bar in Lovington which is in a hotel. He was very generous and bought us a few beers as well as dinner. After dinner we followed Trenton to his house, which is out on his family's property. His father runs the family farm, dairy, and ranch that was founded by his grandfather; Trenton has thought about continuing the family business but he currently works as a chemical salesman for Baker Hughes. At dinner, Trenton mentioned that for fun they like to drive around the fields and hung rabbits, and Josh was very excited about that! When we got to Trenton's house we loaded up into his truck and drove out into the middle of the wheat fields for some shotgun practice.

I liked shooting the gun but I was not interested in shooting any adorable rabbits, but Josh was! He hopped into the passenger seat and Trenton drove all around the fields searching for cute rabbits to shoot. We quickly learned that Josh has terrible aim even when a cottontail is sitting right by the truck, but Josh managed to kill two jackrabbits, one on the last shotgun cartridge!

My high was the sunset in west Texas.. it was so beautiful! Josh's high was hunting because he's obviously never hung out the passenger window of a pick-up truck to shoot animals before. Again today Josh and I had to think really hard to come up with a low, but I think it was leaving Karen this afternoon.. she was such a nice lady! Josh's "ho" was going to the only bar in Lovington, and my "ho" was feeling extremely out of place in every small town we go to.. we definitely are "city folk!"