Road trip for upcoming series...

This past week Mr. B and I carved out three days for a road trip to do some research for another cowboy series. The Lucky Penny books are written and it was time to think about "what happens next." So we packed our suitcases and headed to the Texas Panhandle. Actually to the little town of Happy, Texas where the series will be set on a big ranch out to the east of that little town.

I learned a long time ago not to write about a place that I had not seen with my own eyes. In Emma's Folly, the characters were swimming in a lovely little clear creek that flowed through the land up around Dodson, Oklahoma. When I went there to look at the place that creek was brick red at the bottom of a six foot drop off of nothing but red clay soil. Taught me a valuable lesson!

We took off with no reservations and armed with my Texas road map. That would be the one that is ripped down the middle of one fold and has writing all over it from past series. I still don't like a GPS because I'm prone to change my mind about which direction I want to go at the last minute, and Edna or Gertrude or whatever her name is doesn't understand that and keeps yelling "recalibrate" or is it "reset."

I thought I remembered a fairly good hotel in Vernon, Texas from research on a previous book and sure enough I was right! I'd thought about characters for a couple of hundred miles and was coming up with a fairly good premise for the new series so the day had been a good one.

We left early and headed north to Happy, to the Palo Duro Canyon to take pictures for another project I'm working on, and then we started back to Lubbock for the night. That's when a little county road called out to me from my wrinkled map and we decided to go east rather than south. I don't think we passed more than a dozen cars in a hundred miles but it was such a peaceful ride over to Childress where we found a hotel room with no problem.

The pictures that Mr. B took for me as I threw out plots and honed in on something that would work for this new series which will debut in about year...anyway, the pictures are gorgeous and I have to share some of the sunsets, sunrises and photos of the land where my soul finds peace. I absolutely love the flat country where the land stretches on forever and ends where the sky begins. In another life, I'm sure I owned one of those huge ranches!