New Mexico - Day 1

First day of vacation and it’s already an adventure.  We started the day heading north.  Yes, north.  The boys both won top blue ribbons at County 4-H Days and qualified to give their speeches again at Regional 4-H Days.  So, we began the first day of our vacation in El Dorado, sitting in a crowded hallway, talking with Grandpa Coy and Grandma Jane, waiting our turn to give two speeches to a judge.  Two more blue ribbons and we were back on the road to Winfield.

After a quick stop at the house to change, load the car and take the traditional “boys about to go on the road” picture, we turned south to Edmond, Oklahoma, The Mother Road, and a day of discovery.  During the drive, we made the first of three major discovery’s that day:

Discovery #1:  At a dinner party, mom and dad would probably play soft jazz or Top 40 rock, Isaac would play classical music and Sam would have silence.  These are the things that the Hicks’ discuss in the car.

We left I-35 north of Edmond and headed east to catch The Mother Road (State Highway 66) just to the east of Arcadia, Oklahoma.  It was there we stopped at our first roadside attraction – The Round Barn.  Originally built in 1898 by Big Bill Odor, he apparently felt a round barn would be tornado proof.

While tornados may not have ravaged the building, time finally did.  A book I purchased at the gift store says “At 12:09 on the afternoon of June 29, 1988, the decaying roof of the old barn ‘just kind of sighed and fell in, like a soufflé.’’  And so, along came Luke Robinson, a 74-year-old, retired carpenter who raised funds and lovingly raised the barn and its fallen roof back to its former glory. 

There was a wedding in the top part of the barn while we were there so we weren’t able to peek in.  But we did traverse the museum and gift shop in the bottom where there is some great Route 66 memorabilia – including a highway map from 1900 showing a highway running through Winfield, Kansas that we never knew existed.

After that, we stopped at Pop’s Soda Ranch and all of us – including the car, had a drink.  Pop’s is another Route 66 landmark and worth the stop.  There is a huge, neon soda bottle in the front and the store boasts that it sells over 600 flavors of soda.  We took a little time to choose four and had our first snack from the back of the car in the parking lot.

From there, we headed west following Route 66 (which has now basically morphed into I-40), stopping at the Sayre Denny’s for dinner.  Nature gave the car a nice carwash along the way.

Discovery #2 – Approximately 20 minutes outside of Sayre, Ross suddenly sat alert behind the wheel, glanced in the rear-view mirror and loudly exclaimed, “Son of a….!”  Thinking we were about to get hit by something behind us, I jerked awake from a cozy, full-tummy snooze.  “The church clothes are still hanging on the door in the bedroom.”  So at least no one was hurt, but at 8:35 in the evening, finding substitutes in the next 12 hours was a challenge that none of us were ready to take on.

Outside of Amarillo, we ran into a good old fashioned Texas windstorm the likes of which I have never experienced.  There was so much dust in the air, visibility was limited.  We were sharing the road with what Isaac termed, “the most semi trucks I’ve ever seen in my life” so the high winds and low visibility were making driving slow and troublesome.  Tumbleweeds were blowing across the road at a nice clip, occasionally hitting the side of the car but creating some interesting entertainment as we hunted for our exit.  Finally, we reached exit 74 just outside of town and pulled into The Big Texan where we had reservations for the night (more on The Big Texan tomorrow).

Discovery #3 – While checking into the hotel, Holly, the hotel clerk pointed out that I was using a Discover Card that didn’t have my name on it.  Sure enough, when she handed me back the card and I examined it, I discovered that I had been using a girlfriend’s card!  Apparently, during our girlfriend night to the movies last weekend, the cards had gotten switched at dinner.  I quickly called said girlfriend and told her to pull out her Discover Card and look at it.  We both had a good laugh at the circumstance.

Vowing to cease using the card, we hunkered in for the night to the sounds of gravel hitting the side of the hotel and the “whap, whap” of a loose tarp in the back end of a truck parked outside our door – a tiring but eventful day.  We are going to sleep in late tomorrow and have our own church service in our PJs when we decide to get up.