We woke up and basically left Meghan's apartment. Our first stop for the day: Waffle House; a pride-and-joy chain of the mid-west. I must say that the waffles there really are world-class, but everything else I felt was very average. Anyway, considering that some of our viewers are mocking this blog because it seems to only be about the food we're eating, I am going to perpousfully skip these details.
The challenge for the day was set when we pulled onto I-40 West out of Normand and our GPS read that we had 541 miles left to go on that road until we reached Albuquerque. Being as patient as possible, we sat in somewhat silence as we began to listen to the obscure stuff that was loaded onto our Ipods: episodes of This American Life, Car Talk, etc.
On the road in OK, we were in the bathrooms when we used these interesting contraptions: 3-in-1 soap dispensers, washers, and dryers. It was as if your hands were being treated to a spa treatment all in 1 machine. We were very impressed at this invention! Anyway, the journey for the rest of OK was flat and boring. Lots of nice-looking cows though could be seen on either side. Things didn't really start to get interesting until we crossed into the meekest state in the Union: Texas.
Being over-ecstatic, we decided to pull off I-40 right after we crossed the border and drive down some backroads for lunch. What we saw was incredible: long, skinny roads leading into back country where the speed limit was, I kid you not, 70 mph. Old 90's trucks were zooming past us as we simply putzed around and rubber-necked into the backyards of Texan ranchers. After we got tired of the scorching heat, we pulled off on a random road for lunch. (End of lunch description)
As we continued on the road, it seemed that the next major city was going to be Amarillo, TX, a destination for lots of truck drivers that I'd heard of in the past. Another beckoning symbol of the town which we were informed of from Billboards all the way there was known as the "Big Texan." There, you could be given one 72 oz. steak to finish...by yourself. If you did, along with a potato and some vegetables, you could get the meal for free. If you didn't finish, you had to pony up a hefty sum. After eating meat 3 of the 4 nights on this trip, in no way was I going to be able to do this.
Around mid-afternoon, we arrived in Amarillo. It turned out to be a busy transition town as expected, but with a bit of charm. There, we stopped for a frozen dessert at "Braum's." It was an ingenuous idea from my POV: fast-food ice cream. I'm not just talking chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry shakes, but an entire ice cream bar that had multiple locations in multiple states. I got a brownie sundae for 4 dollars...what a bargain!
The rest of the trip out of Texas was, in my opinion, very hair-raising! Many people flipped us the bird as we "plugged up" the fastlane, and that along with climbing temperatures which probably rose into the 100's, we quickly lost morale for the state. I can't really say that the views on the way out were particularly beautiful either.
Our final encounter with Texas was a visitior's center on the western edge of the pan-handle, (the little bump at the top of the state. If I didn't make myself clear, this was the part that we drove through.) This was the fanciest welcome centre that we had ever been to yet: it had tornado-shelter bathrooms, a small museum all about the pan-handle, and a viewing dock which we could look through FREE telescopes and see way off into a Texan landscape. It was beautiful.
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