Sep
18
2009

New Mexico To Missouri

(Add / View Comments) (0)Friday, September 18, 2009 - 05:59:59 pm
(Posted Under: Travel, Operation Desert Rock)
When you have timezones working against you, it makes sense to combat them with an early start, which is exactly what we did. Up at 6, breakfast by 6:30 (complete with a freaky experience of legions of old coots filling the Super 8 breakfast room, which is difficult to process when you're still kinda half asleep!) and on the road at 6:45am. Quite a productive morning. Which paid off, since we hit the Jensen house in Missouri at exactly 6:30pm tonight, which was appreciated!

There was no mistaking the fact that we weren't in Arizona anymore, as it was actually cold this morning! Cold enough to have the heater on to defrost the car windows.

Immediately once out on the road out of Tucumcari, New Mexico we were greeted by a blazing red rising sun right in front of us to the east. A really cool sight! It never ceases to amaze me how quick a setting sun will disappear, and the spend at which it will burst into the morning sky really isn't any different. It was only a few minutes before it was over the haze / fog that was giving it it's vibrant red color, and was high enough to just look like your average every day sun!

Since I didn't get to bed until late again last night, today's trip back consisted of a lot of sleeping on my account. I did manage to hold it together for the Texas border. At some point I crashed out hard - with the pain in my neck caused by sleeping in the car really not doing all that much for walking me up. I however did wake up when Katie stopped for gas. Great, smoko time - and I was also in a good position to make use of the Flying J's facilities. [smile] After doing such, I wandered around inside, waiting for Katie, checking out the souvineers and crap for sale. It wasn't long before I thought to myself how much uncooler Texas is - in that I can easily entertain myself within a road stop in New Mexico or Arizona - but here, nothing was really catching my eye. After walking around for a bit more, I started to notice that there was substantially more Oklahoma based paraphernalia than Texas. There is normally cross over with the states, particularly when they're along route 66, but this was impressive. Maybe we were in Oklahoma and I didn't know it?!? Nah, we couldn't be! I asked Katie on her return, and indeed we were! Which really explained what I was seeing in the Flying J. Kinda annoying that I slept through the Texas/Oklahoma border, but I guess it goes to show how tired I was.

Throughout the rest of the day I kept dosing off for long periods, waking up and not feeling all that rested. Unlike the trip to Arizona (and yesterday for that matter) where the few naps I took really had me feeling refreshed!

Somehow today we didn't have to spend as much on the Oklahoma tolls as we did on the way down. We're not entirely sure how that happened, but hey, why look a gift horse in the mouth.

Certainly during the last few ours of the trip we were both over it. I love road tripping, and really didn't get bored of it at all on the way down. However this afternoon was different, it was less comfortable sitting in the car, and we were both looking forward to hitting Warsaw! The hardest part was being 45 minutes out. Having been driving for almost 12 hours, another 45 minutes today, with the home icon displaying on the GPS screen, it seemed cruel that we couldn't just be transported instantly that last however many miles.

However getting to the front gate at 6:30pm was rewarding, and really made getting up that bit earlier worthwhile!

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