Now, where was I? Ah yes, we were just getting to the good stuff, the fun stuff, what in the world is there to do in Midland/Odessa Texas? Well, this answer is complicated by the Covid shut down, so the quick answer is NOT A LOT! But, I am a resourceful girl! At the time we were in Texas, the only major restrictions were social distancing and restricting the amount of people inside a store at any one time, but most everything was closed anyway.
Also, all the National Parks were shut down, which is a real bummer because I LOVE visiting National Parks. As many as I can actually!
Side Note: America the Beautiful parks pass is currently 80.00 and worth every penny!
So what exactly did we do for fun in Midland and Odessa Texas?
Parks! Small parks. I did mention I am a girl who loves has a bizarre obsession with parks right? As much as we could, we went to as many parks as we could find in and around this area that were open. I will start with Odessa because we are going to work our way from bad news to good news.
ODESSA:
I hate to be this way, and again I apologize to those who are from Odessa, but my honest impression of this small city, it is a dump. Never have I ever seen more garbage in a park in my life. It made me so incredibly sad. The first park we went to was Memorial Garden Park, right in the middle of Odessa. This park consists of a small pond with a nice walking path. And TURTLES! Oh my, I have never seen more turtles in my entire life than I saw in Odessa and Midland! It was pure delight to see these adorable creatures, and it was also heartbreaking. This entire pond was rimmed with garbage. It literally looked like a sewage pond with sweet little turtles everywhere. Much to my dismay, we also caught sight of many disposable gloves and masks floating around as well. It’s gross to see it in a store parking lot, it’s heartbreaking to see it in an animal’s home. Looking back on it, I wished I had taken photos of the garbage rather than trying to keep it out of my shots. I think there could have been an excellent story there.
The next park we visited was the Comanche Trail West Park. We went to this park kind of by accident. It was not the park we were looking for, but we went with it anyway. This park is located in an industrial area, off the beaten path. We weren’t sure about it but decided to give it a shot. There is a nice walking trail, called, what else, the Comanche Trail. I would love to tell you how long it is but I cannot find the information I need for that. What I can tell you is that we walked down a tree lined path from one parking lot to the next. This trail goes on and on for several miles. Again, we did come across trash but it was nowhere near as bad as the last park.
The last park we visited in Odessa was the Comanche Trail SOUTH Park. This is where the above-mentioned trail leads. There were not as many turtles at this pond but there were a lot of people here fishing. I would say it was a pretty average place. Nothing fancy. Again, there were a lot of places we did not go here, simply because we couldn’t with the shutdown.
MIDLAND:
We only went to one park in Midland, but it was worlds apart from the parks in Odessa. The one park we found with a pond was Wadley-Barron Park. This pond was much cleaner, although we did still see some trash in the water. We enjoyed our walk around this pond and the drive through the Country Club Estates neighborhood behind the park. The homes are beautiful! Much better than most of the rest of the city, which seems to be extremely run down.
We really had hoped to go to the I-20 Wildlife Preserve and Jenna Welch Nature Study Center because it looked promising. But when we drove by, the gates were closed and it looked like a big empty field. The website pictures looked promising though. I suppose if we ever have another mission in this area we will try again.
There are two nearby cities that we visited while we were in this area, they were Andrews and Big Spring. Andrews has a nice park with a pond and walking path and Big Spring has the Big Spring State Park, which has hiking trails and a loop that you can drive up to the top of this bluff and overlook the city. There are some really interesting rock formations to see here too. We enjoyed this park.
Overall, I did enjoy this mission, I think it would have been a totally different experience if it had not been for Covid. I love visiting museums as well but, again, they were all closed. I spent a lot of time walking around our campground taking photos and watching tv. I am learning to slow down in this season of life. There is no hurry.
I am looking forward to more adventures.
With Love, Jen Fulks, The Elegant RV’er
A Time for Everything
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
I had never seen a thirteen line ground squirrel before!
Our campground was surrounded by oils fields. One evening there were two explosions that rocked our camper. Those in the know told us this frequently happens with batteries. I'm not even going to pretend to know what that is in relation to oil fields.
I added flowers to our porch!
And they promptly died in the heat.
