Americana Travels, Pt 12: Oklahoma City to Albuquerque

May 23^th, 2012 – Hi everyone, Mrs. Pope here. I’m doing the blog tonight, since Pope just spent the last nine hours driving us across three states – well done, honey. We’ve settled into a nice rhythm of me driving around the cities with my highly skilled ability to make hair-pin turns whenever needed and my exceptional parallel parking abilities, especially under pressure (she says modestly), and Pope driving on the highways with his lack of lead-footed-ness and ability to be completely entertained by any type of music playing on the CD. We are a good team.

Today was monumentally uneventful. Knowing that we had a solid 8 hours and 45 minute drive from hotel to hotel today, not counting stops or unforeseen events, we did not mess around. Up at 7am (cough cough 7:30 cough cough for Mrs. Pope), we took advantage of the free breakfast at the hotel, showered and dressed, loaded the car, gassed up, Starbuck’ed up, and hit the road. We scheduled no site-seeing stops, which was easy enough since we saw all the best stuff on the East-bound trek. We made several stops for gas, coffee, and snacks, and pulled into our hotel parking lot in Albuquerque nine hours later. Did I mention the 30 mph winds, pretty much the whole way?  Yeesh. It is unreal how loud they are howling as I type this. We might be staying in tonight.

One interesting thing about road tripping that we have noticed so far is that eating gets pushed pretty low down on the priority list. Yesterday, after the leftover BBQ for breakfast, all Pope and I ate the rest of the day were a few handfuls of gluten-free pretzels and two pieces of candy – seriously, all day. Yeah, we were hungry when we went to bed, but it wasn’t a high enough priority for us to make an effort to do anything about. Gas, coffee, and sleep are the priorities. Today we had a big, solid breakfast (thank you Springhill Suites Oklahoma City) and a drive-through snack somewhere by some gas station a few hours ago. Yesterday was Day 11 of this trip and I would say that was the fourth day this trip that eating really did not happen. And keep in mind we are doing what some would consider a wimpy man’s road trip, trying to limit our number of hours behind the wheel to 6-7, ideally.  I think I can have some glimmer of understanding why truck stops are known for burgers, fried chicken, soda, and coffee. It’s short-term immediate survival trumping long-term health. Pope and I quickly discovered on Day Two that our usual amount of coffee in a given day was not going to cut it. I have always limited myself to one Trenta (that’s about 30 ounces) iced coffee from Starbucks a day, and I really keep it to 3-4 per week most of the time – but NEVER more than one Trenta in a day. Road tripping? Yeah, when my head is bobbing at 4pm and I’m trying not to doze while driving, and we still have 200 miles to go – caffeine consumption worries be damned! I am much more worried at that point about falling asleep behind the wheel. Pope and I have averaged double our usual daily intake of coffee. Thank God this trip will be over in another few days – I don’t think our livers and kidneys could handle much more.

We only got about five hours of sleep last night, so we are bleary-eyed and tired, especially poor Pope who hammered through the driving. We wish you all a good night, and will be back tomorrow. 

Mrs. Pope

Quote of the Day: "No, they're not waiting for a waffle. They're simply staring at the food."