Road Trip, Day 4 – SO Over N.M.; We decide to mess with Texas

Written By: Colleen - Nov• 16•06

ay #4 – Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006: So we wake up around 8:30am on Thurs, hoping that the day will be a lot less eventful than Wed was. We get our free expanded continental breakfast & hit the road a little bit before 10am in good spirits. Today’s going to be a day of just driving so we can gain some ground & get through the boring part of the south (New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma). We want to make it to Amarillo, Texas (Tricia kept singing the George Straight song “Amarillo by Morning” & was dying to go to one of country music’s favorite places to sing about). We have to get through all of NM first. It takes longer than planned, however. We hit “traffic” on our way out of NM. And by “traffic,” I mean Rt. 40 closed down to one lane because of construction so we had to drive like 45mph instead of 80mph (the speed limit is a GLORIOUS 75mph).

Here’s a lovely video of Tricia’s version of “Don’t Turn Back in Anger” to fit our current situation:

We finally made it to Amarillo, crossing into CST (NM is MST) & therefore losing an hour, which proved to be a massive pain in the ass bc we wanted to get as far as we could that day. It was interesting, however, because the sun still set at the same time. In NY, the sun sets around, what – 5pm? It’s the same case for Cali. But in Texas, the sun didn’t set until 6pm. This has no relevance to anyone’s life, but it was something I noticed & felt like wasting 2 minutes of my life discussing. We found the only Starbucks between CA & Nashville in the middle of Amarillo & ate at some Southern equivalent of Applebees. It wasn’t the greatest, but it wasn’t awful.

After dinner, we decided to drive until we couldn’t drive anymore. We ended up making it well into Oklahoma & stopped in Checotah around 11:30pm. For those of you who don’t know (I didn’t), Checotah is the hometown of Carrie Underwood. The only thing in Checotah is a bank, a Wal-mart & a motel where a lot of truckers stay. Oh yeah, & a giant sign that says, “WELCOME TO CHECOTAH, HOME OF CARRIE UNDERWOOD, AMERICAN IDOL 2005.” I think Tricia secretly wanted to end up there.

On a side note, I’d like to say that the desert is nice scenery at first, though it does get boring watching for the occasional trailer park cities that randomly appear. However, the best part about driving through NM, TX, OK, Arkansas, etc was by far the awesome road signs. Oh yeah, in Texas, we managed to pass the largest cross in the U.S., which is all lit up at night. I’m fairly certain the electric chair was somewhere in the field behind it, though.

There are always Mexicans.They have Cowboys AND Indians in the South still, too.