The Road Trip Chronicles: Day Two

Cousin and I woke up at a leisurely pace on Tuesday morning to find that Nurse was nowhere to be found. She called to tell us that she had been across the street to check on the truck, and was now driving around town trying to find a bank that would cash her traveler's cheques. The truck wouldn't be ready until after lunch, so the traveler's cheque mission continued. What a nightmare. Apparently, banks do not like to cash traveler's cheques. We went to four or five banks before we finally found a sucker that agreed to do it. And even that was an act of Congress. We went to a little diner for lunch, then to Wal-Mart of course. Then back to pick up the truck. Only, the shop didn't have all the parts needed to fix the truck, so we spent an hour looking at each other before making the final call to leave the truck in Okmulgee and pile into the Mustang and head on our way. We stopped in Oklahoma City at Cracker Barrel for another Boyd's Bear, but didn't have time to stay for dinner. We stopped closer to the Texas border for fast food, and kept going. I was crammed in the back with the luggage. It was pretty cool really. I sort of had a little office area set up all around me for my cigarettes, bottled water, cell phone, and the atlas. The bright spot was that it was way more for the three of us to be in one vehicle instead of one of us being alone.

While we were driving through Oklahoma, I saw two things I had never before seen besides in pictures in Social Studies books: oil rigs and wind-turbines. Yes, I am a dork and the least of things will amaze me. But seeing those and seeing the vast difference in landscape between a "great plains" state and that of Sweet Home Alabama made me realize why Mr. Greene had told our geography class to "see the country." What an awesome opportunity I had been given! I was on the phone with Roommate (before she was my roommate) when we started seeing the wind turbine fields. I was going crazy over them! She was so cracked up at me.

We made it to Texas just as night began to fall upon us. Now... you know I'm a sucker for a cowboy and a good-looking horse, and Texas is where the "real" cowboys are. So I have always had a magical image in my head of what "Texas" must really be. That I was standing in the great state was almost more excitement than I could manage. We took our picture with the "Welcome to Texas" monument, and I realized that just as I had imagined: Texas smells like cows. I couldn't see them, but I could sure smell them! We drove a few more miles to the rest area and took a break. They had grills in the shape of Texas and we, of course, made our picture with them. There was another wind turbine there. We could barely see it because it was dark, but we could hear it whistling. For several hours, we had been seeing a storm in the distance (that's how it is when the land is flat - the horizon stretches on forever), and the whistling of the wind turbine was a warning as to how close the storm was. Right when we left, the bottom fell out and for several minutes we drove through a most terrible storm. Then it was gone. At 11pm we stopped for gas in Amarillo. Amarillo by mornin', up from San Antone, everything that I've got, is just what I've got on... (a little George Straight for you there). Amarillo is the American Quarter Horse Association Headquarters, which was obvious. Trucks and horse trailers everywhere. Every motel (no hotels...) parking lot had a sign pointing out the direction of the "horse trailer parking lot." And of course, it smelled just like horses. Even at the gas station. Apparently, Amarillo rolls up the streets when the sun goes down because we were the only people visible in the whole town. We decided that spending the night in Amarillo would be a waste of time because we still had plenty of safe driving time left and we all still wide awake. Onward we go. Sometime after midnight, we crossed into New Mexico. Upon doing this, we also gained an hour of time. Who knew that the Central Time Zone that encompasses the great state of Alabama stretches all the way to the panhandle border of Texas? It was dark, deserted (maybe because we were in the dessert), and a little spooky, so we chickened out when it was time to take our picture with the state sign. Instead, we stopped long enough to take a picture of the sign and kept going.

Pretty soon it was time for another bathroom break. Gas stations were scarce (and scary) so we stopped at a rest stop. May I just say that everything you would think a rest stop in New Mexico would be is exactly what it is. The word "scary" doesn't begin to cover it. There were no lights in the parking lot. Cars were everywhere, but we didn't see one single person the whole ten minutes we were there. Ex used to live in Arizona and I had consulted with him in great detail about the things we should expect to see. He told me to watch for snakes in the dessert because they're very deadly, and there would not be enough time to get to a hospital if bitten. Wonderful. Wouldn't you know it, we parked right in front of a "keep your dog on a leash" sign, and right below that sign was another that read "watch for snakes." Great... We didn't see any of those, thankfully, but what we did see was just as disturbing. The building itself was complete with rounded brick arch-ways and a tiled roof, similar to most Mexican architecture. The bars on the windows were enough to make us rethink stopping there. But we were there, and had to go. Once we got to the porch, we could hear this awful noise. And this is the mental picture that still makes me shudder. Beatles. Hundreds of them, all laying on their backs with their legs wiggling in the air. And not just normal beetles. Oh, no, that would be too easy. These beetles were of mutant proportions; it was so nasty. Then we went inside. It was like a Hitchcock film. The computer was on, and a TV was on in a back room, but there was no one around, except for the few stray beetles that had made their way inside. Spoooooooooky... We did our business and got the Hell out of Dodge in a hurry! We drove another hour or so and came to a town called Santa Rosa, and got a room for the night. We were all so dirty and nasty and sticky and sweaty... we took turns taking a shower and went to bed. Sleep was not hard for any of us to find that night.