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I chose this color for today's text, because this was the color of the sky today! We went 267 miles, with one stop for lunch and a walk for Maddy. We arrived at about 3 pm at Magic Circle RV Park at Willcox, Arizona. Our "Where are we now?" is now over 3 days old, but you know where we are, because I just told you. :P~
We watched a little tube till about 4, and then went on a nice walk around the park with Maddy. The weather is perfect for short sleeves.
I fixed ravioli (from Sam's -- cheese and chicken.. mmm) with Prego sauce and Parmesan on top. It was delicious, and what's even cooler is that we ate just half of it, so we have the same thing for tomorrow.
Tonight, we're watching a program about inmates in Miami and just relaxing.
Willcox Sunset:
We drove from Lubbock to Alamogordo, New Mexico on Wednesday. The drive was spectacular. The road was mostly 4-lane, but sparsely traveled. Terrain was varied and interesting, with sagebrush plains punctuated by rolling hills and aspen-lined streams. We passed through several small towns along the way.
Our favorite of these small towns, a place where I do intend to stop someday, is Tatum, New Mexico. Their streets are each labeled, not with generic glowing green and white street signs, but with beautiful black silhouette metal art signs! Each is different, depicting western scenes, plants, animals.. just wonderful!
Here is a website for one of the metal art companies we saw driving through. Another is Poor Boys Metal Art, which doesn't have a website that I can find, but their work is beautiful too, of the same silhouette type.
We lunched at an Indian casino/restaurant where Michael enjoyed a huge club sandwich, and I had a Denver omelet!
A short time afterlunch, we arrived at Roadrunner RV Park in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Here I am resting with the pets after the day's drive:
Yesterday we took pictures! We went to White Sands National Monument and walked the dunes. We took a lunch, which we enjoyed with a really nice couple from Vermont.
Interesting plants:
Janee and Michael playing in the sand:
White Sands!
Bird tracks in the crispy soft gypsum sand:
This was our 2nd visit to White Sands. We really love this park!
On Monday, we left Oklahoma, without looking back. We didn't really like Oklahoma, though I know that we're judging a whole state on very limited data. First of all, we were really put off by all of the very negative political advertising on TV. Yes, it's true that many races around the USA have been reduced to mudslinging, but in OK, Michael and I got the feeling that these folks would still be battling after the election is over.
The other thing that made us dislike Oklahoma was the laundry situation. ;) We had to do laundry, and the campground where we were had just two washers and two dryers. With 6 loads to do, we clearly needed a different solution. We headed into the village of El Reno and found a laundromat. People were actually smoking in there! Kids... freshly washed laundry... and smoking. What's wrong with this picture?
And one of the washers spit grease onto one of my favorite white t-shirts. Oh.. and the machines stole 50 cents from us. So we disliked Oklahoma on this trip.
Yesterday I drove 345 miles, taking us to Lubbock, Texas. The weather changed drastically during the day. We awoke in Oklahoma on Sunday to rain and 50 degree chill. Monday morning, we had thick fog, but it lifted by the time we got into Drive.
The terrain and view has changed dramatically too. While Missouri was red and orange with oaks, Oklahoma was yellow and green, and we couldn't tell what kinds of trees there were. Now here in the TX panhandle, we've seen sagebrush, yucca, and fields of cotton plants!
Michael took these pictures when we were on the way to Oklahoma:
And when we arrived in Lubbock, we broke out our T-shirts, enjoying tempes in the upper 70's! We did a little maintenance work today, vacuuming, shaking out all rugs, emptying the tanks, and getting up on the ladder and cleaning the windshield.
Here's our campground in Lubbock:
Michael working on the water hookup
Eddie is a happy cat!
We went walking ydy at the campground here. Today, We had hoped to walk the Texas Tech campus, but were disappointed by the seeming chaotic construction everywhere we looked. It just didn't seem walkable. So we went down and walked the perimeter of the mall with Maddy, and it was fine. We were searching for shade, though, because it was so warm!
We drove around in the countryside and I took this shot of a cottonfield. We've seen thousands of acres of cotton on this trip. We figure we've probably seen it often, but just never have seen it at harvest time.
Yesterday we awoke in Joplin, Missouri and did some home maintenance -- vacuuming and dusting.
Oak trees in Joplin
We put on our nicer duds and drove to Sandstone Gardens. Now.. Sandstone Gardens is a sort of home and landscaping design center. The place is huge, like a Paul Bunyan-style mansion. Here's a picture of it from in front. We were far from it at this point, but one has to be far from it to get it all into the frame.
Much of the place was decorated for the holidays, Christmas in particular. Sparkling beauty was everywhere. Of course I found some reflection shots!
We loved these concrete bunnies, which they make here, along with thousands of other concrete creations. We bought a couple of these bunnies.
They have a neat little cafe in the mansion, too, and we enjoyed a sumptious lunch before we left.
Next, we went into town, stopping at the grocery store for some supplies. We took these home (ice cream melts!) and then went back out, finding the mall! We did our walk there.
Dinnertime! Along Rangeline in Joplin, were a plethora of restaurants -- an almost annoying assortment of every sort of eatery you could imagine. We decided to go to Johnny Carino's.
"Is a table OK?" the girl asked.
"We'd rather have a booth." Hey, it's the truth, and she did ask.
So then she told us that there were booths, but that the server assigned to them was not going to be in for 30 more minutes. And then she just stood there looking stupidly at us.
I looked at Michael and said, "Well, there are MANY choices of places to eat," and we left. LOL I can't believe that a hostess for a restaurant could be that stupid.
And we went back to the mall and had a delicious supper at DQ! :)
This morning (Saturday) we had a quick breakfast and then got the rig put into travel mode. Vroom vroom! and we headed off down the road. Today we were on I-44 headed down into Oklahoma. Tonight we're just west of Oklahoma City. We had supper at Denny's, walked around the campground/hotel/restaurant complex, and then settled in.
I discovered that I was not able to get blogger to work, so am hoping to post this on Sunday.
Oak trees in Joplin
