Better Late Than Never

Amarillo by morning…isn’t there a song that starts out something like that? Well, we didn’t get out of Memphis as early as I had hoped. In fact, we got out much later than I earlier anticipated. However, we quickly began the next leg of our journey and were heading west on our way to Amarillo, Texas. We were looking forward to this journey for quite some time, and problems aside I think everyone is having a pretty good time. I mean my wife has gotten motion sickness in every state that we have traveled thru, my kids spend more time playing video games then looking at the changing landscape, and I remain steadfastly behind the wheel, navigating the Turd from one locale to the next. This idea of traveling cross country was born from the nostalgic, romantic notions of motor coach travel on good old Rout 66. Connecting with the land, seeing our beautiful country close up in a way you never could from 30,000 feet. I have to call BS. The truth is that Tennessee appears to have a lot of trees and the only discernable difference between Arkansas and Oklahoma are the license plates on the cars. Yes it is true that Arkansas and Oklahoma both have a lot of trees also, but they also have long stretches of empty spaces, rolling hills and an interstate system that would rival that of a third world country. If you like thrill rides try driving a motor home thru Little Rock or Oklahoma City. When you’re finished, if you still have both you’re kidneys and you haven’t inadvertently peed in your pants, you should be proud. If I had to summarize my impressions of Oklahoma and Arkansas in one word it would be ASPHALT! As in get familiar with it buy it and use it! We spent 11 hours battling our way through some of the roughest terrain west of Port Au Prince (that’s in Haiti for all of our friend back in SC), only to reach Texas in the middle of the night. In all fairness to both states, the giant windmill farms in Okalahoma are really neat. There are miles and miles of these, huge wind driven turbines littering the landscape and seem to come straight from a War of the Worlds movie. In Arkansas, we had fun watching the old crop dusters working the field. Many of them would fly briefly alongside the interstate or cross over it at very low altitudes. The kid’s loved it and I must say that I did also. However, it is bad to say that the only memorable things we saw in Arkansas and Oklahoma was a hundred or so giant windmills, a few crop dusters and a gazillion potholes.

We got into Amarillo around 11:00pm local time. When we got to the campground we were surprised at the overall quaintness of the setting. It appeared that the campground was located at the convergence of two major railroad lines, one running north by northwest and the other running north by north east. Picture the tracks forming a “V” shape, with the campground located inside the “V”. Now, place the airport at the top of the “V” and well, you get the picture. Anyway, we pulled into the campground, retrieved our assignment information and proceeded to our slot. Pulling in to our slot, I prepared to go out and hook up the RV to the water & power. I no sooner reached the door when the gas alarm began to shriek. My wife and I, both bleary eyed from a very long day of travel, stood there and started to laugh as a train pulled past us drowning out the screams of the shrieking alarm.