Waking up at about 7:30a, Tyler and I took our time a bit before hitting the road today. We ended up starting out at about 930a after a quick fuel stop. We quickly left Shawnee behind us and ventured forth toward Oklahoma City.
On the whole, Oklahoma can be a beautiful place, but I-40 had so much construction that it was hard to appreciate the natural beauty. Granted, a good portion of the road we took on the western side of the Mississippi was under construction, but only Oklahoma runs you through a slalom course before shuttling you to the opposite side of the highway in a single lane with a low shoulder. Yeah. Didn’t like that one bit.
On our way out of Oklahoma we stopped at Erick, OK, to top up the fuel, partly because of the name of the town and partly because we didn’t want to chance getting stranded because we weren’t cautious about our gas. Sadly, there wasn’t a souvenir to be found in the truck stop that said Erick on it.
Next came Texas, which consisted of wide open flatland on either side of us. It was boring, to say the least, but the monotony was broken up by a couple of wind farms and the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere. Yeah. The wind farms were cool; just watching the windmills rotating and creating a pattern was hypnotizing. But, like I said, other than that, there really wasn’t much else in Texas. Unless you count the food challenge that neither Tyler or I would dare try: a 72 ounce steak in under an hour and it’s free. For those who don’t want to do the math, that’s 4.5 pounds of beef. Not freaking happening.
As we approached the border of Texas into New Mexico, the landscape began to change. At first, I noticed small crevices in the earth which looked like really small canyons. Then, suddenly, we were overlooking mesas and buttes and canyons. Absolutely beautiful. I was very content looking out over the landscape until we got to Exit 0.
Exit 0 came and went and we found ourselves actually in New Mexico. And the Mountain Time Zone. We decided at this point to stop at the information center and find more out about the state I had decided to move to. The woman working there loaded me up with so much stuff she needed to give me a plastic bag just to carry it. We went back out to the truck after that and headed back out to the road.
New Mexico consisted mostly of long stretches of road with no civilization around, interspersed with small communities centered on the truck stops. The landscape was amazing, however. New Mexico is called “The Land of Enchantment” and today I found out that it’s aptly named.
After a few more hours of driving we got to Albuquerque and promptly drove through it to get down to Socorro, NM, so that we could stay with her. After some finagling, we stopped in Las Lunas for some Sonic Drive-In. Not the best burger I’ve had but I can understand why people rave about it. And are annoyed at the ads teasing the New Englanders. We took a little bit more time than we wanted to at Sonic, so we didn’t arrive in Socorro until after dark. But, we’re safe in Socorro now so I’m going to bed.
