We survived the janky motel last night. The bed felt like it might have once taken quarters, as it was comically shaky. It had a weird aroma featuring a mixture of cigarettes from another era, pot, and bleach. The room coffee pot just boiled the water in the reservoir and leaked around the edges (only producing one of the four cups of water into coffee). The front office didn’t have coffee, but it did have coolers of live fish. Well, it seemed like they actually cleaned things and the toilet worked, so we’ll call it a win.
We headed out early with almost 650 miles ahead of us, departing AK and entering OK. Shortly after crossing the state line, we saw a disturbingly massive bank of dark clouds. Then my weather alert went off to warn us of a severe thunderstorm with straight-line winds, hail, and a chance of tornadoes. Luckily, we just had heavy rain, wind, and lightning but that was quite the storm for 8 in the morning. It was a good opportunity to sing the Oklahoma song lyrics, “Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain…”
Although we’re only on day 2, we’ve sufficiently worn out all the cheesy road observations we tend to say. We’ve yelled “hey” at the hay bales and remarked “look at that ass” to the donkeys. We’ve pointed out the cows with either “ground beef” (for those laying down) or “click clack moo” (for those standing around in a huddle). We’ve even resorted to singing the Ren & Stimpy classic Log Song at the passing log trucks. I know–this really makes you want to be on a road trip with us. LOL
As we continued through OK, the sun came out and the clouds became friendly. It was at that moment that we understood the OK car tag design. The blue tag perfectly matched the baby blue sky. The white abstract bird image on the tag matched the wispy white clouds spotting the sky here and there. Try as I might, I didn’t find a bird-shaped cloud in the sky. OK was a beautiful state, and I loved seeing thousands of windmills throughout the landscape. (I tried to get an “up close” picture, and the windmill seemed so close in life but looks comically far away in the picture.) We also saw the largest cross I’ve ever seen.
Before leaving OK, we headed over to part of Route 66 and went to the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City. In addition to the museum, they had a whole city block full of historical buildings that had been transplanted from places all along Route 66. It was cool to stroll through and fun to see families with kids running around imagining themselves in the pretend world. My kids would’ve loved this place when they were younger–I could almost envision little Lizzy running her brothers around to play school, pretend shop, visit the movie theater, etc. As a note, there seems to be hundreds of “official” Route 66 museums, and we even stumbled upon Mater at another location.
Back on the road, we quickly came upon Texas. In addition to windmills, we occasionally saw these weird tire mountains. It looked like someone had made huge strawberry plant mounds (with the white plastic covering) and then buried tires in them. Is this some sort of TX recycling??
Our next stop was Cadillac Ranch. We came prepared with our spray paint but, sadly, flooding from this morning made it impossible to reach the cars without stepping into water and, most assuredly, deep Texas mud. It was still a cool site to see, and we painted on the ground and some walls to be part of things. I also had a bracelet to retire, as it was falling apart. It was a match to one Lizzy and I got together in summer 2019, so I couldn’t just throw it away. Instead, Thom and I painted it with our green and purple paint and tied it on the fence where people left all sorts of mementos. It seemed fitting to leave it near the colorfully painted Crocs. 🙂
Approaching New Mexico, the landscape changed to absolutely nothing but road and nature as far as the eye could see (which was a pretty long way). There was prairie with growing ridgelines here and there on each side of the road. There weren’t even any windmills! This is what they mean by wide open spaces!
We had one final stop of the day–The Blue Hole. Apparently this dive locations is world-famous for its cave system at the bottom of the hole (going from 80 feet deep to nearly 200 feet deep). In addition to divers coming and going, there was a spot for cliff jumping in the hole and then plenty of room for swimming or snorkeling. It was beautiful, fun to snorkel, and extremely refreshing at a cool 61 degrees!
Standing Strength 
I love reading about your Adventures! safe Travels…Mary Lou
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