Right now, I'm looking forward to a good restful night after having a pretty restless one last night. It was one of those situations where you know you are tired and need to sleep, but the limited time you have causes you to lay awake worrying about falling asleep. Ugh.
I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night and while I find their commercials pretty annoying, they have won my business as long as they are an option. They had the best continental breakfast of any chain hotel I have stayed at. It definitely got me off on the right foot this morning, which was good because I had a pretty boring stretch of road to start my drive.
The western half of Oklahoma is a pretty desolate stretch. The most enjoyable for me was to see some of the large fields of wind turbines cranking away. I used this time to finish up the next episode in the audiobooks I had been listening too. If you are a fan of British humor, the Ricky Gervais podcasts are a must-listen. I'm hooked on them for the foreseeable future.
I crossed into Texas mid-morning and blasted Rocky Top from my iPod to for all my friends in Knoxville, putting the Lone-Star State on notice as to who is the real UT.
My stay in Texas was relatively brief, crossing through the square part at the top. Amarillo was the only Texas city I passed through and driving in it reminded me of a carnival. Up until you get to the heart of the city, there is a string of restaurants and shops that are built facing the interstate at the same angle as billboards in order to lure those passing by. Mostly these were novelty museums, hat/boot shops, and general souvenir stores, but there was one attraction that I was excited to see, The Big Texan Steakhouse. This is the place where you can get your picture on the wall by eating an entire 72oz steak. If I didn't have another 9-10 hours left in the car on the day, I may have given it a shot, but I had to press on.
The remainder of my stint in Texas was spent listening to a couple of Old Crow Medicine Show albums. Once I crossed over into New Mexico, the speed limit went up to 75mph and so I switched my music up to Wolfmother since driving fast and rock music go hand in hand. About an hour into New Mexico the scenery started to change to more desert-like surroundings than open fields. Jimi Hendrix soon became my music of choice as I soaked in a part of the country I had never seen in person.
I was cruising along listening to Jimi completely unaware that I-40 and some train tracks were fixing to converge and run parallel for a ways. I have always had a thing for trains and was way too excited to see a train running just ahead of me and that I was closing in on it. I sped up to the caboose and then slowly crept along side the train for a few miles before the tracks headed off in a different direction.
Easily the highlight of my day.
I enjoyed the rest of the daylight, in particular the sunset as I drove through the Sandia Mountains just outside of Albuquerque. I stopped for gas shortly afterwards and was slightly annoyed and oddly proud of the fact that a hold had been put on my Amex card. Apparently the string of gas charges on the card had set off whatever algorithm the Amex computer uses to identify potential criminal behavior, like I was a modern day Bonnie and Clyde (which makes my iPhone 'Bonnie' since its the closest thing I have to a travel companion). A quick call cleared up the issue and I was on my way again.
From this point on it was all about covering ground. I crossed into Arizona after dark and made just a quick stop in Gallop to top off my tank and 3 hours later, I was in the very snow covered city of Flagstaff.
Just before exiting the interstate, I saw my first sign for Los Angeles. Barring any major hang-ups, I should reach LA sometime tomorrow afternoon at which point my road trip will be over and (wait for it... the cliched ending...) my real adventure will begin.
Oh, and Happy Valentines Day!
Yeah, happy f'n Valentine's Day!
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