Driving Day

Monday, October 31, 2011

Today is a designated driving day, so not much to talk about. About the only semi-interesting thing today was stopping in Oklahoma City for an oil change. We had called ahead to find a lube shop that had tall bays. We found one with 12 foot clearance, and still had to be extra cautious. The Rubble mobile went in just fine, but the Flintstone mobile is a couple inches taller. We told the attendant that, but he didn't seem to hear and hardly slowed down going in. Yep, we made it, but the attendant that was in back watching was gasping at how closely we squeaked in.

While waiting for them to service us we talked to two local women about our trip. One of them commented that we had been in more states in the last month than she had in her life.

There was quite a bit of construction around Oklahoma City, and it was good to get out of there, but this part of the trip is fairly "unscenic" and we have had a strong head wind most of the day.

We did approximately 150 miles before crossing into Texas. It is 176 miles across the panhandle of Texas, and the Welcome Center is about half way across so they only had to build one, not one on each side. You can pretty much count on the welcome centers and the restrooms there being clean, unlike some of the rest areas along the way. We continued on across Texas, and stopped at the New Mexico Welcome Center. Fixed haystacks for our supper and ate in because of the wind.

Crossing into Texas

An interesting sight along the way.

Miles and miles of nothing.

Then we crossed into New Mexico.

This is our third state for the day. We are now back in our own time zone, so feel closer to home, although we have a lot of miles still to travel, and a number of planned stops before getting there.

Driving off toward the setting sun, with it glaring into our eyes, we planned to stop at a rest area for the night. The first two we came to were both closed, and they are about 50 miles apart. The third one we came to was open, but quite unlevel to try to stay in, so we drove another 15 miles to a WalMart parking lot. We will try to relax a little and then get some sleep. I guess the good thing is that we are that much closer to our first stop of the day tomorrow.

Good night from the Bedrock Bunch.

w