Field Trip!

At the beginning of June, I went with 4 other co-workers to visit "the field" outside of Canadian, Texas where we're drilling some wells.  I have been dying to see a working drilling rig since I started in this industry, so I was over the moon excited to go!

We left Austin at 6:30am and landed in Amarillo, then drove 2 hours north to Canadian, which is in the panhandle, almost to the Oklahoma border.  We met our tour guide for the day, a sweet land broker out there who I am sure wanted to drive around 5 city girls all afternoon!  Our lunch was phenomenal - if you are ever in the vicinity, go try The Bucket.  It's cash only and so cheap.  They make their own bread and cookies, so my burger and sugar cookie were delicious!  Then we stopped at the company office, put on our steel toes and headed 45 minutes into the country.

Our first stop - a drilling rig!  They were having drill string issues, so they weren't technically drilling when we were there, but they were still working.  We walked up on the drill floor, over the mud pits, and saw the BOP and casing down on the ground.  Pretty exciting!

We spent most of our time that afternoon in the car because...

Yep, that says 108 degrees!  It was incredibly hot, dry and windy.  Jeremy lived in Phoenix for a year and I swear Canadian was hotter.  We saw several other locations being built, one location being swabbed, and we saw a bunch of Braums cows (yes, THE Braums farm, like the milkshake people!).  On our way back into town we stopped at the Dirtiest Little Beer Joint in Texas.  Canadian is dry, so this is the only place guys can buy beer (and boxed wine!) on their way home from the field locations.  We thought it was pretty hysterical... and I found this lone gem in the cooler I had to try!

Have you heard of Big Blue?  I had not, but it was delicious.  Kind of like blue cream soda.

We showered the dirt off of ourselves and went to dinner with good ol' Ray at the Railhead, one of two places for dinner that came recommended to us.  Apparently the Cattle Exchange is better food but the Railhead serves alcohol (by way of paying $1 to be in their 'club'), so that won out.  I had steak fingers, mashed potatoes and green beans and it was great except for I think it was still 108 degrees inside the restaurant.

The next day we started with breakfast at The Bucket - we couldn't stay away!  I had toast (their homemade bread) and part of a cinnamon roll, the breakfast of champions.  We drove again into the country so we could see a frac job take place.  Unfortunately they weren't prepared for 5 female visitors and we didn't get to see much happening besides a pressure test (and that is not much to see).  It was still neat to see all the trailers and trailers of CO2 and water the use.

We drove back through town to pick up our bags from the hotel, and a couple fresh cookies from The Bucket (yes - we all did!) and we headed back toward Amarillo.  We stopped for lunch in Pampa and took some of the RRC ladies out to lunch, ladies I work to get approvals from almost daily!  It was nice to meet them all in person and check out their office.  Pampa is huge compared to Canadian!  We were back in Austin by dinnertime that night, but I loved the trip.  I love being out in the field, and you learn so much there even in a short amount of time since that's where they're actually doing the work we always talk about in the office.  I hope I get to go back soon!