New Mexico to Texas

New Mexico – TEXAS!!

Do you know the New Mexico state question? Red or green? It refers to your choice of chilies. Makes me chuckle. Tumble weeds make me chuckle, too. New Mexico seems to have a lot of them. I found them amusing until one jumped in front of my car as I was cruising down the freeway at 70+ miles per hour. Hit that tumble-bugger head on! It didn’t fare too well, but I think my car’s OK. Hard to tell, it’s so dirty. At least the massive rain storms we drove through in Utah washed away most of the bugs. For awhile I had bug-soup on my windshield, but that too was eventually cleared away.

Santa Rosa is behind us now, and we’re officially in Texas. As we were cruising down the highway, I was wishing for a rest stop. I saw road side picnic areas (no facilities) and road side parking areas. I don’t know what was up with that. Just an off ramp and back on ramp with a place to park and dump your trash. I’m not sure why anyone would like to park next to the highway to do that. Go figure. We did eventually come across a real rest area. Wow! Texas really does them up right. It was beautiful. Great covered picnic areas, play structures for the kids, vending machines, history vignettes, even the ladies restroom was lovely with its vaulted wood planked ceiling. At one point, as we were driving through Memphis Texas, the song “Deep in the Heart of Texas” came on the radio. (It was one of those rare moments when I hit the SCAN button and the radio numbers didn’t keep spinning like a broken roulette wheel.) Memphis is a very quaint little town (rustic), and coupled with the tune emanating from my speakers, I felt like I’d already arrived.

-- At the Rest Stop --

Click on the picture to the left to see what the informational sign says. An take a look at that blue sky and fluffy white clouds!

And to the right is a picture of the ladies restroom.

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We were feeling pretty good, so we stopped in Amarillo for a burger, then kept driving. We tentatively set our goal for Wichita Falls, but didn’t feel quite like stopping just yet, so we kept going. I must admit, the panhandle area of Texas really isn’t very pretty. But the further south we got, the lovelier it got. The weather is nice – in the 80’s, there’s lots of green, and some gently rolling hills. Little did I know, my awe and admiration was about to come to an abrupt end.

We timed it perfectly… hit Fort Worth rush hour traffic at exactly 5:30 p.m. Fort Worth is the 5th largest city in Texas, and the traffic didn’t disappoint. I was right behind Rick on the freeway, but that didn’t really matter. In a matter of moments, there were cars between us, beside us, all around us, knowing where they were going, and going there very quickly. We were totally at the mercy of our GPS advisors. Unfortunately, since he was pulling the U-Haul, Rick wasn’t able to maneuver as quickly as required, and missed his turn. I didn’t see where he went, so I just followed my GPS voice commands and end up on a completely different highway. We tried to keep in touch via cell phone, but in the middle of the horrendous traffic, there were times that talking on the cell phone just wasn’t advisable. I kept driving south, and into a gigantic black thunder storm. I felt like I was driving into the belly of the beast!

We pulled off the freeway as soon as we could, and checked into a Best Western. We RAN to the entrance because it was raining and blowing so hard. It wasn’t until we got inside that we found out that we were also in the middle of a tornado outbreak. WHAT??? Still not sure if we’re out of the woods, but I sure hope so! We’re only about 3 hours from our final destination so should arrive early and ready to work (unloading and unpacking). I’m hoping this final leg of our road trip is quiet and uneventful. I’ll post as soon as I can, but we won’t have internet for awhile, so I’m at the mercy of my unsuspecting neighbors and their unsecured networks. :-o