Thursday, June 29, 2006

Tucumcari, New Mexico


We left Arlington, TX this morning around 10:30 and arrived at Tucumcari about 6:30 this evening. A number of things happened to us on this leg of our journey. First, Steven was pulled over in Clarendon, TX for speeding. Not a big surprise but we were a bit annoyed as we were only going 10 miles over the speed limit and we were one of the only cars of the road! The ticket will cost us $165! Sheesh, when I got my ticket in PA back in 1992 I was doing 23 miles over the speed limit and I think the fine was $110. Guess that is what time and inflation have done.

The second thing that happened is that we have now crossed into the Moutain Time Zone. It is 9:15 pm here instead of 11:15 pm like it is at home.

Much of our drive today was F-L-A-T and hot. Most of TX is what we called "MiddleOfNowhereTexas" and I even checked the town listings on the map to see if there was a place with such a name. (There isn't as far as I could tell) We did see "Goodnight" TX today, there is a "Shannon" TX and even "Claude" and "Floydada". Now, how in the heck do you think that name came to be??? We saw a great number of abandoned farms (sad because you can see the ghosts of people living and working there and you KNOW they had a rough life and now everything they had worked so hard for is delapidated and crumbling to dust), plenty of brown fields and scrub brush. We passed what we think were oil wells...that was pretty neat to see. I guess I always assumed there would be lots of people or security around an oil field. I don't know why I thought that but I saw no people at this place. Just machine after machine pumping away. Shortly after that field, we saw a train with nothing but oil cars attached to it.

Around the TX/NM border, we started seeing small mesas (flat hills). About 12 miles outside of Tucumcari there were even bigger ones covered with small scrub brush trees. We could see storms in the distance as we got closer and of course, as soon as we pulled into the hotel the raindrops started. The rain didn't last long so we all went out in the parking lot and splashed in the puddles. The kids had a blast. We went to the pool (the water wasn't very cold but the air was starting to get chilly)...Steven, Delaney and William swam but Tinna and Mama stayed at the side with just our feet in. We were plenty happy there. At any rate, the evening was beautiful, no humidity and a beautiful sunset. From the pool we could see a rather large mesa and I took a few photos of it.

We are probably going to be skipping our stop in Albuquerque. Christy Mae is dissing me for a boy (thanks, girlfriend!). Seriously, though, by skipping the scheduled night in Albuquerque, we can get to CA on Sunday instead of Monday. I'm really ready to be off the road and just sitting still somewhere anyway.

Oh, Tinna has the beginnings of croup so we are hoping we will get some sleep tonight! Sue, you were right about Comfort Inns and pets. This time we didn't even ask what size dog they accept, we just said "do you accept pets?" and they said yes. The people in the room next to us have a big dog, too, judging by his bark. This is our second night at a Comfort Inn so hopefully we will continue to find them as we go. This one is nice because all of the rooms open to the outdoors and not into a common hallway. I guess you could say it is more like a high quality motel.

That's about all from here. More from NM tomorrow, hopefully.

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