jesse_the_k | ROAD LOG: 12

Monday

We leave Albuquerque at 9:30 on the nose, 34°.

One continuing mystery: the support poles for the overhead roadway signs. They seem to be constructed of 16 inch sewer pipe painted that horrible institutional brown. It’s a 20ft high 90° elbow.

We're not stopping for food in Santa Rosa. Bella gets a walk in the park, I get a walk in a Dollar General, we squeeze back into the van 36 minutes later.

Arrive comfy and cozy in room 103 at the LaQuinta Mid City in Amarillo, Texas. It’s 50°, but the winds are steady at 20 to 30 mph, and it’s 3 o’clock on the nose. Since we were in mountain time it’s actually 2 o’clock back there. Where? don’t know.

Tuesday

Shortened workout in indoor heated pool followed by first real shower with handheld since 1 February.

We leave the LaQuinta Amarillo at 9:05 AM with the temperature at 27°

Landscape between Amarillo and Groom is so flat that the only vertical elements are telephone poles, high-power electrical towers, windmills, cell towers and oh look three trees!

11:30 AM we stopped for everybody to “make water,” has my father would say. I grabbed a blueberry yogurt at Braums, a combination fast food joint and convenience store with no liquor. I scored a nice restroom, Bella did her business and so did Nevin it was pretty much all around wonderful. And then we hit the road again at 11:42 with a temperature of 40°

Google‘s maps send us driving in circles yet again! The phone goes back in my bag. Nevin uses dead reckoning to get us back on the highway. Right before the Arkansas River in Tulsa OK a billboard informs us that “Tulsa is home to the only museum dedicated to the collection of lighters.” Gotta check this one out next time!

Arrive in Claremore at 348p 52° dinner thanks to Reasors’ baked chicken.

Wednesday

Leave 858a at 45° driving in a cloud of fog visibility around 100ft. We passed a seemingly endless array of churches. Stop at 12:10 at the Bandannas in Lebanon Missouri. Nevin walked the dog while I logged our progress.

Billboard mentions “We are having big fun here in Uranus,” and yes the voice rec software made the homophonic error the marketing folks want you to. At least we didn’t have to see the scores of Best Fudge from Uranus! ¹ billboards inflicted on us westbound thanks to Uranus Missouri Chamber of Commerce.

MyGuy was driving along and thinking “you know I paid extra to get a spare tire because I know we take a lot of road trips. I didn’t want to go out into the world without a spare tire.” Within two hours boom the tire got hit by something that left a hole the size of a pinky finger. It’s just three blocks from our motel. MyGuy manages to pull into a Denny’s. I roll to check in and get a tire-genie rec from the manager.

Of course he’d brought along the 1/2-inch drive to loosen that spare from its spindle underneath, between the two front seats. (No room for a spare inside the car anymore!) Forty-five minutes and $65 later we have a new, used tire from Cheapies²

Our Pontoon Beach instance of La Quinta is definitely the worst of the lot. The indoor pool is somewhere between 90 and 100°, so I take it very easy.

Thursday

We leave Pontoon Beach at 830a, the temp is 59°. Home is calling our name and we’re fiercely dedicated to not stopping. Brief pauses at Farmersville and The First Rest Stop in Wisconsin (~Beloit), munching out of the traveling pantry.

The roads are damp but not slippery. Around central Illinois there’s heavy fog–can’t see more then two car lengths ahead. It rises and falls and dissipates around Mendota. Here’s where we first see snow in the ditches. The level increases until we hit the outskirts of town, where it’s clearly snowed significantly and been plowed, gritted, filthified, and melted. We pull into our driveway at exactly 2:00pm CDT, temp is 48° and we have just gone 1445 miles.

uranusmissouri.com ↩︎
Highly recommended if you’re in Southern Illinois. https://rollingfamous.com/ ↩︎

Final Thoughts

It was nifty to visit Albuquerque, but we sure wouldn’t want to live there.

The hellscape curb ramps mean that it’s a very car-dependent city. The bus service is at Madison’s level although it’s four times the population. It’s economically depressed and it makes us depressed. Perhaps it's all the commercial facilities for rent (at least half). The sun is abundant, and the people we encountered were very friendly.

Interstate highways are about getting somewhere else. Along our journey, drivers were targeted by the immediate needs–toilets, food, gas, sleeping–and relentless attempts to sell the past. Antiques, vintage, flea markets. It’s oh-so-American to have a tourist attraction based on the fact that the road used to go there: that is to say “historic route 66,“ which paralleled our route. Every town that still maintained a billboard advertised a route-66 related museum, whether it was automobiles or diner signs or those lighters we're going to investigate real soon now.

Hum along to "Get Your Kicks on Route 66" (lyrics at the link)

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