Mal's travels - A story about my journeys by Mal J Robinson: Day 18 - Midland, Texas

Saturday and the first day of the weekend. The plan was to go over to Midland via Odessa, both are reasonable sized towns. I set off from Hobbs before 9.00 am and I was going to stop in Odessa and have a look around but as I drove through there was not anywhere I could see that interested me so I carried on and went straight through to Midland, where I arrived around midday. I drove around the town and then as advised headed for the loop where the majority of the shops are. Firstly I found the Shopping Mall and made my first stop there. I didn't expect it to be as big as Meadowhall in Sheffield or the Trafford Centre in Manchester but I was surprised how small it was. The Mall consisted of about twenty or twenty five shops and my intention was that I would have a good day of shopping and try to get some presents apart from the usual chocolate I normally bring back for everyone. Unfortunately I am a man and that means that after about thirty minutes I was bored of looking around the shops, other than Radio Shack in which I spent about 30 minutes on its own.
Now the problem I have is that in the UK the normal routine is to drive somewhere, park the car and then walk around and return to the car to go home. But here you can only park and visit a handful of shops before you have to move the car to the next few shops. So having to move the car every 20 minutes did detract from what shopping experience I was having. Back to my day and after the Mall I moved to the next set of shops and one of them was Cavenden's which was a sort of Cowboy outrigger shop and tempted into getting myself a present as I dont know if I will every come back here after this time as you never know what will happen. So I got myself a Cowboy hat and with my new shades I hoped I would look like a "real cowboy" but in hindsight look a bit more like one of the Village People. At least I have part of my next New Year Eve's party costume.
I eventually got tired of shopping at around 3.00 p.m. and with my next scheduled entertainment being the drive in movie at 9.00 p.m. I decided to check the sat nav for a country park or nature something or other to go and explore. I moved from one attraction to the next and eventually found that by just gone 5.00 p.m. I was almost eighty miles away from Midland. I thought about going back for the evening drive in but i had really hoped that the new Planet of the Apes film would be on but it isnt and the only one that did interest me was the new comedy by the makers of Family Guy but as my journey would have been to turn around and then wait another few hours I decided to carry on North and eventually by just after 7.30 had arrived back at the hotel. Although I had missed doing something I hadn't done before I wasnt too fussed as back in the room I am tired and feel very sweaty as one thing I haven't mentioned is that all day the temperatures have been between 99 and 97 degrees so even though the air con was on, every time I got out of the car it was very hot. Even as I headed back to Hobbs and further into the desert the temperature was going up even though I came back into town at 7.30 ish the temperature had reached 101 degrees. So as soon as I got into the room it was a replenish of some water from the fridge and then straight into the shower and pleased that I did come back earlier than planned and I can get a good sleep and head off tomorrow of which I am not sure exactly where I am going but in my mind I am thinking that South seems a good way as I have not actually headed that way yet.
I did do some videoing of the day today but as it was mainly shops and a couple of views of scrub I will not bore anyone with that.
Below are a couple of photo's including me in my new locals costume.