We got up with the sunrise so we could get an early start. We had 304 miles to go today–about 5 hours of driving. It will be a long day. We didn’t have much to do to get ready to leave with the truck being hooked up from last night. We got going about 8:30–a half hour before our self-inflicted deadline of 9:00. It was already 60 degrees after a low in the 40’s overnight and the sun was shining bright in a cloudless sky. We were camped to the west of Albuquerque, so our first event of the day was dealing with rush hour, of which there didn’t seem to be any.
We spotted one, lone hot air balloon in the sky heading out into the countryside.
We had traveled this stretch of highway before on our way out this direction in September, but after passing through Santa Rosa on I-40 everything would be new to us all the way to Amarillo, TX. We were surprised to see a herd of 8 antelope walking along the fenceline. The terrain was primarily grassland with sagebrush and a few small trees thrown in.
Traffic was light on this long, straight road over the rolling hills. At the top of each hill, you could see forever.
As we moved west, it became more mountainous and windier.
We left New Mexico and crossed the state line into Texas at 1:00 (2:00 CST) and the Central Time Zone. We lost an hour.
The wind was blowing 22 mph and now we had a headwind. Our gas mileage dropped drastically. As we crossed the border, we saw some cowboys rounding up their cattle. This is Texas, after all!
The terrain was continuing to change and became flat grazing land with nothing much in sight, except miles and miles of wind generators and cattle.
Fields and fields of sorghum and cotton were ready for the picking.
About 40 miles from our destination, our cruise control on the truck died. What’s up with that? We placed a few phone calls and found a Ford dealer in Amarillo, so we made an appointment to take it in tomorrow at 7:30 and have them read the computer to see what’s going on. We arrived at Overnight RV Park in Amarillo at 3:00 and checked in.
In the reviews about this campground, no one mentioned that it was near the train tracks and an airport where commercial and Navy fighter pilots fly into and out of. Today, the flight path seemed to be right overhead. They were flying so low that their shadows moved over us. Yikes! I hope we can get a decent night’s sleep!
We set up camp and relaxed with a cocktail before dinner. We were tired from the long, boring drive today and just wanted to chill out and watch some TV. We hope we can move on tomorrow to Seminole, OKlahoma, but we’ll see after the Ford dealer checks out the truck in the morning. Keep your fingers crossed that it’s an easy fix.
