The 730 miles of day one were behind us, but it was not time to get cocky. We had over 800 miles ahead of us today. "Texas Day" was going to be the longest of the three full driving days. The temperature was well over 100 degrees all day, so with the AC cranking in our overloaded car we sucked through gas stopping four times to reload
.
Fully loaded with gas, two bags of sunflower seeds and a lovely breakfast from the Marriott we were back on the road.
Good morning El Paso
"Hey, what do you think about taking I-10 again?!"
"What a super not boring idea!!"
"Weeeeeeee"
Booooooooorrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnggggggg gg
Driving is boring, until you see trains!!
Mrs. Madone59 was already in Charlotte so I decided to send her a message from Texas. Now, I don't want to spoil any surprises but one of us got our car shipped across the country and that same person got to fly on a direct flight too.......again I am not going to say who didn't have to flatten their rear end for four days in the car. I am just going to say someone didn't have to, and leave it to you guys to figure out. If you can. I know this is a very tricky puzzle BUT you are a sharp group.
Texas is enormous. I've flown through both Dallas and Houston but other than one three day work trip to Houston a few years ago I had never spent much time in the lone star state; it's huge!
SANdEhGo lived in Dallas for a while and always tried to explain to me there even the sky looked bigger in Texas, but I didn't understand it until I saw it - the sky really looks bigger. It really does!
SANdEhGo gets artsy with the camera as I possibly slowly get heavy metals poisoning from sunflower seeds ^
So as broad as central Texas is the frequent brownout dust clouds grew old quickly and the smell of oil was permeating the car. My recirculation button was no match for the thousands of wells buzzing past us and the crude in the air.
Not yet ready for lunch but in a desperate need for a walk my travel companion Bill Nye suggested we stop and look at the Odessa meteor crater. I'd rather have a meteor land on me than get out of the car to look at rocks, but the options were limited so we followed the signs.
There it is folks, a slight depression in the ground....err....I mean where a meteor landed!!
OK. I am calling bull roar on this whole thing! I've got $10 that says this is where some yoke blew up an oil well but instead of paying out the liability claim Halliburton just put up a gift shop and called it a meteor site.
Well of course they have one of these too.
This bush had the largest thorns I've ever seen "They look like cocktail sticks" - James May. I tried to get
SANdEhGo to hug it
OH HELL NO!
SANdEhGo wanted to walk around the crater. OK, Bye Felecia!!! Leave me your wallet so I don't have to walk out there to get it back; I am going into the gift shop!
Sweet merciful air conditioning - I love you.
Nice try Halliburton, but I'm on to you!
Space rocks
After a very very excited Bill Nye rejoined me in the gift shop/ learning center we chatted up two very nice woman who lived in the area but had just never come out here to "See this thing." No need to go into detail, but it was three against one when it came who thinking this was awesome
. The locals made a few phone calls for us to see if any good BBQ was open on Sunday but they came up empty handed so we ended up heading towards another Texas favorite - Whataburger.
On the way back to I-10 We did stop a brief second to have a look at a cool old family ranch.
Lunch
I hate to disappoint but I ordered the chicken fingers. I know it's supposed to be a legendary burger but i just did not care enough to try it, and the chicken looked good.
Lunch got interesting when a girl, who I hope was over 18, that was eating lunch
with her family in the booth behind us started looking at me.......frequently. I was not looking back, but being in conversation with
SANdEhGo possibly made it appear that I was because she was over his right shoulder. Now I don't know if it was when she opened her legs (she was wearing a skirt!) or when her family noticed she was not paying attention to them at all but her father took notice and get a bit cross. I didn't really realize what what had happened until his death stare caught my eye but I assumed it was because I had California plates on my car. I did lean into
SANdEhGo and comment that a girl behind him appeared to be up to no good but I honestly had no clue that this girl was looking at me. The family left without saying anything, and thankfully took Hester Prynne with them!
Full of chicken and laughing about the beat down I possibly just dodged we got back in the car to get some gas and continue across Texas. I. SWEAR. TO. GOD. I pull up to the pump, and the car across from me is the Whataburger family. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. Luckily I was only down a half so I didn't have to absorb the death stare too long, but it was an uncomfortable splash and dash stop indeed.
Back on the road and enjoying the sights
More of these...
...more of these
Lots, and lots of these
img]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4284/35419034761_113e1a9f00_c.jpg[/img
Don't tell me what to do!
Yum
Like, there is just a hole full of Gilberts? Neat.
Finally we get to turn off of I-10!!
'Merica
$1.94 I can get used to that
A little traffic and another pit stop near Dallas gave us time to look ahead and see that there was nothing worth eating in Shreveport near our hotel. With the sun going down we pulled the trigger on a BBQ spot in Tyler Texas.
SANdEhGo is a big fan of yelp and google reviews - he will follow rankings and stars very seriously when deciding where to eat when in a new town. I don't not look at these things, but I am nowhere near as in tune to them as he is. When looking for a dinner spot we got into a little debate which was that really good local spots wouldn't have high rankings because they were local and locals in many parts of the country aren't on Yelp too much if at all. Our searching, and debating did not let us down - we hit the
jackpot.
Dinner
Happy
Dessert
Hurting bad from all day in the car and stomachs full of Q we finally dragged ourselves into the humid planet known as Louisiana. The hour and a half from dinner to the hotel felt like it lasted a week, but mercifully day two came to an end and it was time to sleep.