600 Miles today!

Today was another long day of driving. We took a long day today, which will leave the remaining few days with more reasonable drives.

We drove East across Arizona, entering the Painted Desert and drove through the Navajo Nation.

Around 9:30, we entered New Mexico. In New Mexico, we entered Mountain Time and lost an hour.

As in all of our drives, we keep coming upon new and different landscapes. New Mexico was full of stark rock formations. We could not believe how around every curve the vista changed. And, as we said several times today: I just keeps going ON AND ON! This trip has impressed upon me just how enormously, gigantically, stupefyingly HUGE the country is!





In New Mexico we also crossed back to the Eastern side of the continental divide. Elevation 7,275 feet! 

So, we drove clear across New Mexico and entered Texas. In Texas we crossed into Central Time, so we lost yet another hour. Upon entering Texas, I saw what I thought were high-rise buildings on the horizon, which seemed impossible. After driving further, it became clear what we were looking at:


Hundreds and hundreds of wind turbines. Carol took this photo, but this same photo went on for about a half hour of driving. 

Eventually, we reached our destination city, Amarillo. On our approach, we drove by the Cadillac Ranch! 


We did a google for a place to eat and decided upon Hoffbrau Steak House. It was the perfect place to go after a nine hour drive. Ice cold beer and Texas steaks. Carol got a filet and I got a rib-eye. They were PERFECT!  Carol got a Lone Star beer, which the bartender called "the national beer of Texas". I love Texas!

We got a room in a hotel nearby, and when we pulled in we noticed that so far on this trip we've travelled 6,115 miles! That's a lot of miles.

Tomorrow's plan is to drive to Joplin, MO, which will be much shorter drive than today (Whew!)

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