Oklahoma State Line

March 6

Kurt had calls at 730 and 9 and then got sucked into an interview. Needless to say today did not get off to a good start.

We drove downtown and went to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. They have the world's most comprehensive collection of Chihuly glass in the world. The pieces were amazing. The museum has a diverse collection of other things and was very well laid out.

Kurt had another call at noon so he went out to the truck to take it. We ended up driving the few blocks over to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. It was pretty and quiet. There were a lot of people there enjoying the sun and warm weather. It didn't feel sad to me.

We didn't stay too long. We got back on I-40 and headed for Texas and New Mexico. Oklahoma has very very red soil. It is dry and not too interesting to look at. We had lunch late at the Cherokee Trading post. Kurt had a buffalo burger and I had some ribs (gotta have BBQ, right?). Both were good. We went into the trading post. It was very nice instead of tacky. We got a bunch of postcards, a Christmas ornament, and I got a charm for my bracelet. We like to get Christmas ornaments on our travels. It's Santa riding an armadillo.

We finally made it into Texas. It was probably after 3:30pm. We are NOT making good time or miles.

The Texas panhandle had lots and lots of cattle and scrub brush. There were abandoned homesteads. I noticed though that even the occupied homesteads look abandoned! It was very windy. We saw the largest wind farm in TX – I think it's in Weatherford or maybe it was Hereford. I40 runs along Route 66 so that was kind of neat to see.
Right when the landscape started to get interesting again with buttes and such it started to get dark. We finally got to New Mexico. It was another 300+ miles to Albuquerque. We decided to shoot for Tucumcari.

When we about 10 miles outside of town. We heard a pop and bang under the hood. We got pulled over to the side. Across the median there was a cop and a tow truck helping another motorist. Kurt walked over there (in the dark) and one of the cops met him in the median. “Stop! Don't come any closer!” There was no tow truck. Instead it was two cars of troopers doing a “consent to search” on the other car. They were nice enough to call us a tow truck.

The thought of towing the giant beast to town was daunting. Watching the guy put it up onto the flat bed was scary. It started to slide back at one point – I guess that's when he released the winch and it slide back into the chairs.

We got a lift into Tucumcari. There is a NAPA that is open from 8 -12pm on Saturday that has a repair shop otherwise the Ford dealership opens on Monday. He sent us across the street the a Route 66 classic motel The Blue Swallow. We got a room for $66. Bill, the owner, is very friendly and very proud of his place. It was used as a model for the CARS movie. It's also been in some other movies.