Adventures on the Poker Felt

We arrived safely in Amarillo at around 12am.

After breakfast and gassing up the truck we hit the road at approximately 11:30am AZ time.  Skies were clear as was the road thru the first few hours.  Just before we hit Albuquerque a rainstorm hit.  We even saw some lightning.  We haven’t seen lightning in quite a while making the drive slippery but interesting.  Tina got a little nervous on occasion one time blurting out “you need to slow down”.  I was able to drive 70-75 mph when skies were clear but had to slow it up during the rainstorm.  She was a little uncomfortable with me getting a “running start” to an upcoming hill.

On our first day of travel we climbed over 7000 feet into Flagstaff.  At times, we were coming up hills as slow as 40-45 mph.  Today we ran into a few hills but never drove slower than 60 mph on the highway.  I told Tina everything would be fine, we might just have a close call.  She wasn’t laughing.  I thought it was kind of funny.

One thing i’ve noticed is I haven’t seen a single roadside call box since leaving California.  There have been times when our cell reception was no bueno through long stretches.   What happens if we have a blow out?  We have no spare for the trailer.  Are we supposed to pull over and pray?   Shoot a flare?  Hope a random tow truck stops or CHP?  This is 2010 and there’s no easy access  to emergency road side assistance on the interstate?  WTF??

Another thing that sucks about driving east is we lost 2 hours going from Flagstaff to Amarillo (AZ to CST time zone).  So instead of getting to our hotel at 10pm we arrive at 12am and find ourselves scrambling around to find somewhere to eat dinner.

Tuesday we wake up and do it all over again.  Next stop, Little Rock.