Where are we Betsy?

Not every day, not every trip goes as we plan. Fortunately, when it doesn’t, often something better happens. Papa and I frequently comment on how good things turn out. 

This is a day where that “better than we planned” thinking was very true. We are traveling a section of Route 66 that we did nine years ago. Today’s first stop didn’t work out so we decided to go with a completely different option and hike for a couple hours. After all, we have seen this Route 66 stuff before so we aren’t missing a lifetime opportunity. 

We put the address for the trailhead into the car’s (Betsy’s) navigation and took off. Follow the pictures below in clockwise order starting in the upper left corner. 

We were directed to a gravel road. Ok. It’s a state park near a lake. Makes sense. 

Then we crossed over a couple cattle grates in the road. The third grate had a sign on the post that read, “Open Range.”  I chuckled and told Papa that sounded like ranch talk. Ah, yup!  We passed several cattle along the road. They stared at us like, “What the heck you doin’ on our land?” There were at least a dozen cattle starring at us!

About the time I told Papa that we might be stuck in no-where land forever, a portable toilet appears along the roadside. It was As if a guardian Angel said, “I got you covered.”  (No, we did NOT take advantage of the opportunity.)

Shortly after the “rest stop,” the road surface turned to an old but nevertheless hard surface road. A distant train gave us hope the interstate was just ahead. FYI, there are train tracks along I-40. Well it WAS the interstate ahead, but first we had to wait for the long, long freight train to pass. Then we very carefully and slowly crossed the bumpy, dilapidated tracks and headed to the interstate. 

Oh, it wasn’t over. The road connected to the interstate entrance ramp.  Yup, a one-way entrance ramp…going in the opposite direction we needed to go. No choice! We went the only way we could. Five miles later, we happily took the first available exit and turned around to retrace the miles. 

Now that experience was absolutely hilarious. I seriously was laughing so hard. We couldn’t have imaged or planned such an adventure. But the best part was the timing. 

We still saw one of our Route 66 stops (Blue Swallow Motel, Tucumcari) planned for today. We didn’t get a hike but we had quite the adventure. And now we were ahead of schedule. 

Here’s the fortunate part. Just outside Amarillo, the rain appeared in the south. The north was beautiful blue sky. The storm rolled in closer and closer to us from the south. Oh I wish I could have gotten video of it. It was fascinating and a bit scary. We opted to skip any more stops and head straight for tonight’s motel. The final 20 miles we had to use the windshield wipers until we got ahead of the storm. Then the car was blasted with a dirt, not sand, storm for about 1/8-1/4 of a mile before we got ahead of the wind. Like the first night, we checked in to our motel and were inside before the downpour began. 

The changes to our plans were perfect and likely helped us enjoy the rain from our comfortable motel room rather than in the car. Awesome!