Americana Travels, Pt. 4: Santa Fe to Amarillo

Americana Travels, Pt. 4: Santa Fe to Amarillo

May 15^th, 2012 - Hi ya’ll, Mrs. Pope here. I’m starting the blog tonight, since Pope is in a corner rocking and drinking. We are not fans of Texas at this point. Not. At. All.

Shortly after crossing over Texas state lines, my car stopped working. Yep, you read that right, my car, the wonderous Harmony Honda, who had not one but two check-ups before we embarked on this trek, the car who has never broken down on me even once in seven years, the car I often refer to as magical, that one, she decided to stop working now, just outside of Amarillo. Keep in mind I drive 50 miles every day for work, all over San Diego County, to and fro, back and forth – the car could have stopped working anywhere at home, and I would have had a second car, a friend, a co-worker, friends’ parents, my Honda Guy at E’dido Honda, and even a couple of enemies, who could have helped. But no. Amarillo. Texas. Five trillion miles from home. Yep.

Okay, so first, let me do the “It could have been worse” litany, because ya’ll know that’s what I do. We had stopped to see “Tex Randall, Big Texan” in Canyon, TX, about 20 miles outside Amarillo --  a giant statue of a fading cowboy. Up until that point, we had been having a great day! Fun, fun, fun at every turn, great travels, lots of laughs, and I even had the damning thought earlier in the day: the car is doing just great on this trip (I know, I know).

We took a bunch of photos of Tex and be-bopped the few steps back to Harmony, jumped in, and .  .  .  nothing. After the requisite, “No . . . no . . . no . . . this isn’t happening,” and shaking my head and closing my eyes a bunch of times, hoping that something would be magically different each time I opened them, we called Triple AAA. Which brings me to the first expression of gratitude:  Thank God we have Triple AAA. We also have the uber membership (Gratitude 2) that comes with 100 miles free towing. And Thank God our dog Skyler was not with us (Number 3), because I would have been hysterical with the “what ifs” worrying about his safety.

Triple AAA dispatched a nice man in a tow truck, but he took over an hour to get to us – apparently it was not a good night for car functioning in Amarillo – and during this hour we were grateful for: (Number 4) Being in a vacant lot off a frontage road next to Tex, not in the shoulder on a freeway. (Number 5) Having cell phone service, which I do believe was a bit of divine intervention, because I swear I had no bars before the car died. (Number 6) It was daylight, which was amazing since this all went down from 7:30-8:30pm. (Number 7) It was clear skies, sunny, not too hot, with a good breeze. (Number 8) We looked to be in a safe residential area, with a little girl riding her bike in her yard not far away, and the sound of womens’ laughter coming from one of the houses nearby. (Number 9) We were under a highly recognizable landmark; Rescue Dude would have no trouble finding us. And (Number 10), there was not a zombie apocalypse occurring. And the Number 11 Expression of Gratitude was that Rescue Dude jumped the battery and we were on our way again – whew!

And now for the bitching, griping, and “Really? Seriously?” portion of the night. We went straight to the hotel (lest we stop and the battery die again) and got so ridiculously, completely, forlornly, pathetically, and epically lost. Really? Seriously? Even calling the hotel for directions proved unhelpful. We resorted to driving up and down the frontage road of the 40, until angels flew down from heaven and formed an angelic circle of light as a beacon in the sky right above the hotel. Okay, I may have been hallucinating at that point. Pope was driving.

And we got to the hotel, got a parking space right in front under a lamp despite the entire parking lot being full (Thank you Lucky Parking Gods), turned off the car, tried to turn it back on . . . and nothing. Sigh. So now we are stuck in the hotel, eating canned soup (Mrs. Pope) and frozen burritos (Pope) from the hotel vending room, and planning to (yay!) get up at 6am to have the car either jumped or towed to Honda Amarillo, for what we are hoping will just be a battery replacement. Stay tuned.

So it looks like The Pope has been fortified by the burrito, and is able to type coherently now, so I will let him finish this up.

Howdy y’all. Yeah . . . I’m recovered a bit from the trauma of Amarillo, but in truth, it all really could have been a lot worse. Let’s go back to how this whole day started off, shall we?

We awoke in Santa Fe at 9:00am, did our showering thing, loading up the rig thing, checking out of the hotel thing, and hitting the road at just before 11:00am. We returned to Revolution Bakery to pick up our order of muffins, and they failed me on the whole jalapeno insertion. Slightly disappointed, but it wasn’t a deal breaker, and . . . I found out that they ship! WooHoo! We headed out of town after loading up on coffee and fueling the rig for the long haul across the eastern face of New Mexico.

First though, we had a stop just to the south of Santa Fe at one of the many State Parks. We were looking for these things called Tent Rocks, which are some volcanic phenomenon where these rocks are formed to look like tents (hence the name). We were let down a bit when we found out that this was actually a hiking site rather than a simple drive by snap shot from the car window site. So . . . we enlisted Jack’s assistance on getting us out of town and to the various sites between Santa Fe and Amarillo.

I found the trip across New Mexico to be amazing. Yeah . . . it was desolate with very few buildings along the 285, but I was alright with that. Watching the ranch land blur by, we were practically the only vehicle on the road. Simply beautiful. Kinda’ serene. Quasi-peaceful.  And then, I watched Mrs. Pope almost die. No . . . not in the serious sense of the term. We were listening to a comedy CD from a character named John Pinette and part of his routine, which had some damn hilarious parts to it, damn near killed my wife. She was laughing, then practically hyperventilating, then crying, then laughing again. And then it almost happened again. I’ve never heard Mrs. Pope laugh so hard during a comedy bit before, and then to have her cracking up multiple times, well . . . it almost hurt my feelings.

                                         Mrs. Pope says buy this now. Track 8. Listen.

From there, we picked up the I-40 east and tore through the countryside toward Texas. Near 4:00pm, we pulled off the freeway in a little town called Tucumcari for a cup of coffee to aid us along our way. My advice to fellow travelers . . . don’t stop in this town. Unless, of course, you want to see a Highway 66 monument or stay in a seedy roadside hotel or inn. We stopped at a Circle K because Starbucks had the good sense to stay out of this one horse town. Let that be a lesson to you, kiddies . . . if it’s too low brow for Starbuck’s, it’s too low brow for you.

A few miles after picking up the I-40 again, we were entering Texas, and a new time zone. Central Time. Yay. Let me try to hold back my enthusiasm as I roll my clocks forward an hour. It’s like daylight savings time multiple times in one week. It’s weird and I don’t like it.

About an hour later, we pulled up to our first Texas stop . . . Cadillac Ranch. You’ve all seen the pictures in the past. The butt end of a bunch of Cadillac’s sticking out of the ground. We pulled off the freeway and hiked across this field to get a better view of this incredible oddity. In truth, I didn’t think the Cadillac’s were all that odd, I was more disturbed by the mass of people returning to their tour bus. It was disturbing because at that particular moment, I was assisting Mrs. Pope walk across the uneven muddy terrain, so was making sure that she wasn’t suddenly wallowing around in the mud. Or cow pie., as those suckers were prevalently littered across the field. I looked up and saw this throng of people stumbling towards us and had a quick fear of the zombie apocalypse. Once I realized that none of them were slack jawed from being undead (there were other reasons for that), I relaxed some, but still . . . we walked to the opposite side of the path just in case. The whole site was pretty damn cool. Apparently people were allowed to bring cans of spray paint to leave their mark on one (or more) of the half buried vehicles, and during all of this . . . in the distance were packs of roving cows, slowly chewing away on wads of grass, or whatever it is that cows gnaw on. So . . . pretty much at any point, I could have walked around a Cadillac and been attacked by a cow.

We left Cadillac Ranch and made our way to a giant pair of legs standing in another field. Again, weird. Texas is just weird. And then, well . . . you’ve read Mrs. Pope’s account of what happened at the next stop. Stupid Texas.

So . . . there you have it. We got back to the hotel room in time for me to watch the end of the Kings game as they whitewashed the Phoenix Coyotes. Now . . . well now, I shall go to sleep, for tomorrow . . . yes, tomorrow is nearly upon us, and tomorrow will be a long, long day.

Thanks for reading. ‘night!

Pope

Quote for the day:

“What the *!@# is happening. Are you !?**@# kidding me right now? --  Mrs. Pope

And a final P.S. from Mrs. Pope: What was that Pope said in yesterday's entry about  Samuel? And I quote, "If anything goes wrong from here on out . . . it’s his fault." Huh. Should we return him to the bottom of the pool in Santa Fe to appease the Gods? Let's see how tomorrow goes. . .