Day 2

Yesterday was a good day. We got on the road at about 9:15 and took it easy through what was supposedly a bad 100 mile speed trap. After a couple hundred miles we had to make the first fuel-stop of the day. John seems to have fallen in love with a Truck-Stop chain called Loves. It's become a borderline obsession and we're worried about him. He's got a map with all of their locations and everything so he can plan out the next "Love Stop." Granted it's great place to stop, they've always got plenty of room for large trucks, 24 hour restaurants, and well priced fuel. The fact that they're at almost every exit on I-40 doesn't hurt either.

Towards the Oklahoma border, south of the Ozarks, Arkansas got really pretty.



After making it out of Arkansas and into Oklahoma and the terrain really started to change. We expected it to be more flat but it was mostly rolling hills. John and I had switched seats and after passing through Clinton we came upon a town with hundreds and hundreds of huge wind generators. It was really surreal and as John so accurately put it, futuristic. The pictures don't really do it justice. Everywhere you looked there were huge windmills spinning miles off into the distance.


A few more "Love Stops" (ok, I won't say that again. Ever.) later we were out of Oklahoma and into Northern Texas. It was incredibly barren. We stopped to get fuel again around 6 and decided to get something to eat at a sit-down restaurant somewhere. Not a problem right? Wrong. We drove for over 200 miles without seeing a thing. There was one tiny little town with a run down Dairy Queen and that was IT. It was really wild. I've never seen that kind of empty space in person. From the interstate we were often able to see what we estimated to be more than 20 miles of nothing. The pictures really don't convey the sheer awesome-to-the-maxness of the whole thing.

We were getting worried about fuel but finally came upon the next fuel-stop with about 20 miles left in the tank. We drove for another hour and finally hit Amarillo. We ended up deciding to eat at The Big Texan Steakhouse, after having seen the billboards as far back as Tennessee (no joke). It ended up basically being a big tourist trap, but we had a good time relaxing and goofing off for an hour or so.



Since we were all feeling so refreshed we decided to go ahead and make it a 1000 mile day, and go all the way to Albuquerque. It was about 500 miles away and hadn't made great time so far. We left Texas behind and cheered when we saw New Mexico's awesome 75MPH Speed Limit signs. Fueled by Red Bull and rocking out to the same Kings Of Leon album over and over, we booked it up the foothills and finally made it to Albuquerque at about 1:30am. JR even managed to wake up the hotel dragging the Dovetail of his trailer all through the uneven parking lot, sending sparks flying everywhere.

We got a good southwestern burrito breakfast in the lobby and now we're waiting for the rest of the group to wake up so we can hit the road and make it to Moab this afternoon!